GIFT  OF 
Gladys    Isaacson 


MICHEL  EYQUEM  DE  MONTAIGNE 

From  an  engraving  by  Augustin  de  St.  Aubin 


Great    Essays 

J 
By 

Montaigne,   Sidney,   Milton,   Cowley, 

Disraeli,   Lamb,   Irving,   Lowell, 

Jefferies,  and  Others 


With  Biographical  Notes  and  a  Critical  Introduction 
by  Helen  Kendrick  Johnson 


Illustrated 


New  York 

D.  Appleton  and  Company 
1904 


9/7 

6-78  G 


COPYRIGHT,  1900, 
BY  D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY. 


GIFT  OF  . 


•••*••     ••   •  • 


ESSAYS  AND   ESSAYISTS 


EVERY  fctm  of  literature  has  its  appropriate  time 
and  use,  and  -1  philosophical  study  appears  to  show 
that  each  form  reaches  a  culmination  at  some  stage 
of  a  nation's  history  or  in  the  history  of  the  world.  When 
the  stage  of  progress  which  called  it  forth  is  gone  by  it  is 
hardly  possible  for  future  writers  to  surpass  that  form  of 
literature  in  which  a  nation  or  an  era  found  its  true  ex- 
pression. There  is  much  of  falsehood  in  the  apparent 
truism  "  history  repeats  itself,"  for  there  are  senses  in  which 
the  world's  history  is  a  series  of  completions.  The  truth 
of  this  may  be  best  realized  in  regard  to  other  forms  of 
art  than  the  literary,  because  the  spoken  and  written  lan- 
guage which  is  its  medium  is  more  evidently  a  living 
growth. 

The  twentieth  century  will  turn  back  beyond  the  pres- 
ent era  for  its  greatest  models  in  sculpture;  to  the  four- 
teenth century  for  its  models  in  architecture;  to  the  fif- 
teenth for  painting;  and  to  the  eighteenth  for  music.  Each 
of  these  arts  has  a  variety  of  forms,  and  each  form  has  its 
own  completion.  Egypt  and  the  Orient  possessed  the 
greatest  temples,  the  noblest  palaces,  and  the  grandest 
tombs;  but  whether  the  expression  was  that  of  pre-Chris- 
tian or  Christian  civilization,  when  the  culmination  of  the 
ideal  toward  which  each  was  tending  was  reached,  progress 
in  that  special  path  was  ended.  There  was  no  beyond 

iii 


iv  ESSAYS  AND  ESSAYISTS 

for  the  art  that  wrought  the  Venus  of  Milo,  or  for  that 
which  erected  the  European  cathedrals;  for  that  which 
gave  us  "  The  Last  Supper  "  and  "  The  Last  Judgment," 
or  for  that  which  found  utterance  in  "  The  Messiah  "  and 
the  great  symphonies.  Henceforth  we  are  imitators  and 
combiners  in  all  these  matters. 

The  question  arises,  Are  any  of  the  great  forms  of  liter- 
ary art  finished  ?  Have  poetry  and  the  drama  reached  their 
culmination?  Must  the  twentieth  century  look  back  upon 
thought  temples  and  statues  and  pictures  that  can  never 
be  surpassed  in  their  own  order?  It  is  not  well  to  dog- 
matize. We  must  remember  with  Montesquieu,  that  the 
success  of  the  greater  part  of  things  depends  upon  know- 
ing how  long  it  takes  to  succeed.  Especially  is  this  warn- 
ing to  be  observed  in  regard  to  such  literature  as  is  the 
expression  of  a  living  language  and  a  living  people.  But 
there  are  facts  which  indicate  that  this  art  is  subject  to  the 
same  conditions  that  are  more  evident  in  the  others. 

Poetry  belongs  to  youth — to  the  youth  of  a  writer,  of 
a  nation,  of  the  world.  We  should  therefore  expect  to 
find,  as  is  the  case,  that  the  earlier  literature  of  the  race 
and  of  nations  contains  its  perfected  poems.  In  the  Old 
Testament  are  to  be  found  the  grandest  models  for  all  poetic 
thought.  Hope  and  trust  are  the  gift  of  childhood,  and 
they  are  the  purest  inspirers  of  imagination  and  of  spiritual 
insight.  Poetic  prophecy  reached  its  culmination  with  the 
ancient  Hebrews,  and  lyric  poetry  found  its  perfect  ex- 
pression in  the  Psalms.  The  highest  reach  of  pathos  and 
triumph,  both  of  feeling  and  imagery,  is  embodied  in  the 
work  of  an  unknown  time  and  author;  dramatic  and  epic 
poetry  are  combined  in  the  sublimity  of  the  book  of  Job. 
The  "  Iliad,"  the  "  Vedas,"  and  the  "  Eddas  "  also  belong 
to  the  times  of  earliest  inspiration. 

The  opening  century  may  reveal  marvels  of  achieve- 
ment in  many  fields  of  thought;  but  in  the  work  of  Shakes- 


ESSAYS   AND   ESSAYISTS  V 

peare  the  English-speaking  peoples  have  given  the  world 
another  evidence  of  climax.  The  future  is  not  likely  to 
show  a  repetition  of  "  Hamlet "  or  of  "  Lear." 

Prose  has  many  subdivisions.  The  oration  appears  to 
be  one  of  the  earliest  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  lasting 
forms.  It  is  a  direct  address  on  a  subject  of  commanding 
interest;  and  such  writings  as  our  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence belong  to  this  field.  The  oration  lends  itself 
to  great  occasions  when  mind  must  act  quickly  upon  mind 
and  when  feeling  is  to  be  stirred  to  action. 

The  essay  is  addressed  to  the  eye  rather  than  to  the 
ear.  It  asks  for  time.  It  presents  a  silent  appeal  from 
the  printed  page.  Like  the  oration,  it  should  possess  a 
single  purpose,  should  be  forcible  in  statement,  and  should 
demand  attention  from  both  the  reason  and  the  feeling. 
The  essay  implies  leisurely  thought  on  the  part  of  the 
reader,  and  it  belongs  to  the  fireside  and  the  study.  The 
essay  should  be  more  philosophical  than  the  oration.  The 
style  may  be  simple  or  ornate,  but  its  theme  must  be  elab- 
orated in  order  to  be  seen  in  its  full  bearing.  The  essay 
is  speculative  and  questioning,  and  sometimes  apparently 
inconclusive.  Its  mission  may  be  either  persuasion  or 
entertainment.  The  essay  that  proclaims  its  own  infallible- 
ness  fails  at  the  outset.  Firm  conviction  on  the  writer's 
part  is  generally  essential,  but  it  should  unfold  itself  grad- 
ually. The  essay  must  beguile  and  invite  discussion  and 
pursuit.  It  is  a  roamer  and  a  gleaner  in  the  fields  of 
thought,  and  the  result  it  brings  must  be  so  presented  to 
the  reader  that  his  own  mind  shall  roam  and  glean.  Part 
of  the  pleasure  given  will  be  the  pleasure  of  comparing  his 
own  reflections  and  adjusting  his  own  beliefs.  The  ideal 
essay  must  be  imaginative,  sympathetic,  and  instructive. 

It  naturally  follows  that  the  essay  is  more  widely  adapt- 
ive than  any  other  form  of  writing.  It  grows  with  a  na- 
tion's life,  and  changes  with  its  varying  pulsations.  It 


vi  ESSAYS  AND  ESSAYISTS 

never  has  reached  the  commanding  place  attained  by  the 
oration,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  never  has  been  lost  sight 
of  as  a  valuable  form  of  literature.  It  is  perhaps  less  easy 
to  make  a  collection  of  essays  that  would  be  agreed  upon 
as  among  the  world's  greatest  than  of  any  other  kind  of 
composition.  The  nature  of  the  essay  itself  suggests  an 
illusive  quality  of  opinion  concerning  it. 

English  literature  is  deeply  indebted  to  Montaigne. 
Shakespeare,  Bacon,  Swift,  Pope,  and  Sterne  were  directly 
influenced  by  him.  Among  modern  writers,  Emerson 
loved  him,  and  Stevenson  speaks  of  the  spell  thrown  from 
his  pages.  In  Florio's  translation  we  have  a  classic  that 
seems  to  make  of  Montaigne  an  English  writer  of  singular 
purity  and  beauty.  He  is  winning  and  ingenuous.  In  the 
preface  to  his  volume  of  essays  he  says :  "  Had  my  inten- 
tions been  to  forestall  and  purchase  the  world's  opinion 
and  favour,  I  would  surely  have  adorned  myself  more 
quaintly  or  kept  a  more  grave  and  solemn  march.  I  desire 
therein  to  be  delineated  in  mine  own  genuine  and  simple 
fashion,  without  contention,  art,  or  study;  for  it  is  myself 
I  portray.  My  imperfections  shall  therein  be  read  to  the 
life,  and  my  natural  form  discerned,  so  far  forth  as  public 
reverence  hath  permitted  me."  Again  he  says:  "  I  erect 
not  here  a  statue  to  be  set  up  in  the  market-place  of  a 
town,  or  in  a  church,  or  in  any  other  public  place.  It  is 
for  the  corner  of  a  library,  or  to  amuse  a  neighbour,  a 
kinsman,  or  a  friend  of  mine  withal,  who  by  this  image 
may  happily  take  pleasure  to  renew  acquaintance  and  to 
reconverse  with  me.  And  if  it  happen  no  man  read  me, 
have  I  lost  my  time  to  have  entertained  myself  so  many 
idle  hours  about  so  pleasing  and  profitable  thoughts?  " 

Of  that  desultoriness  to  which  the  essay  naturally  lends 
itself,  and  which,  rightly  used,  may  prove  to  be  the  truest 
method  for  absorbing  a  theme,  Montaigne  says  in  his  essay 
on  books:  '*  If  in  reading  I  fortune  to  meet  with  any  dif- 


ESSAYS  AND   ESSAYISTS  vii 

ficult  points,  I  do  not  fret  myself  about  them,  but  after 
I  have  given  them  a  charge  or  two  I  leave  them  as  I  found 
them.  Should  I  earnestly  plod  upon  them  I  should  lose 
both  time  and  myself,  for  I  have  a  skipping  wit.  What  I 
see  not  at  the  first  view  I  shall  less  see  it  if  I  opinionate 
myself  upon  it.  I  do  nothing  without  blitheness;  and  an 
over-obstinate  continuation  and  plodding  contention  doth 
dazzle,  dull,  and  weary  the  same:  my  sight  is  thereby  con- 
founded and  diminished.  I  must  therefore  withdraw  it, 
and  at  fits  go  at  it  again.  If  one  look  seems  tedious  to  me, 
I  take  another.  I  am  not  greatly  affected  to  new  books, 
because  ancient  authors,  in  my  judgment,  are  more  full  and 
pithy."  Surely  this  is  the  spirit  and  the  work  of  a  prince 
of  essay  writing  and  essay  reading — a  man  who  takes  his 
learning  lightly,  and  can  presume  upon  that  friendship  with 
knowledge  that  has  stood  the  test  of  years. 

Sir  Philip  Sidney  is  always  pictured  as  grave  and  dig- 
nified beyond  his  years  and  his  time,  but  in  his  "  Defence 
of  Poesy  "  there  is  a  "  blitheness  "  that  Montaigne  did  not 
possess.  Sidney  had  nothing  of  that  irony  which  Mon- 
taigne had  carried  into  retirement  from  the  court  of 
France.  Both  men  were  the  favourites  of  the  highest  cir- 
cles of  their  time;  but  while  Montaigne  contented  himself 
with  the  sobriety  of  a  man  who  had  drunk  deep  of  folly's 
cup  and  found  it  bitter,  Sidney  preserved  a  lofty  purity 
and  reverence  where  so  much  was  vile.  Both  were  learned, 
but  Sidney's  learning  became  wisdom.  All  these  qualities 
appear  in  his  famous  "  Defence,"  and  make  more  conspicu- 
ous the  quaint  mirthfulness  with  which  he  tingles  the  dulled 
ears  of  his  countrymen  who  had  cast  scorn  upon  that  art 
which  was  to  find  so  soon  its  highest  exemplification  in 
their  own  land,  for  the  "  Faerie  Queene  "  of  Spenser  was 
probably  begun,  and  the  first  of  Shakespeare's  plays  to  see 
the  light  of  print  appeared  within  ten  years. 

The  next  essay — Milton's — is,  on  the  contrary,  a  stir- 


viii  ESSAYS  AND  ESSAYISTS 

ring  appeal  to  emotion.  Like  the  others,  it  exhibits  the 
author's  great  learning,  but  in  many  respects  it  is  what 
Milton  calls  it — a  speech.  It  is  an  elaborated  oration,  and 
the  elaboration  is  a  hindrance  to  its  effectiveness.  The 
classic  model  chosen — that  of  the  address  of  the  Greeks 
before  their  Areopagus — is  followed  with  laboured  exact- 
ness, and  this  causes  the  essay  to  be  very  unequal  Parts 
of  it  are  magnificent  in  their  simple,  straightforward  force. 
Invective,  appeal,  argument,  are  used  with  moving  effect. 

But  invective  has  rarely  been  put  into  such  fascinating 
form  as  that  used  by  Cowley  for  a  denunciation  of  Crom- 
well and  the  Commonwealth  as  a  loyalist  saw  them.  His 
essay  is  stately,  picturesque,  fiery,  lofty  in  diction,  and  at- 
tractive by  the  curious  form  selected.  Like  Milton's,  this 
essay  is  political,  but  there  could  be  no  greater  contrast 
than  the  form  in  which  the  two  author  statesmen  cast  their 
appeals.  Nothing  is  gained  for  this  essay  by  the  insertion 
of  the  poems  that  are  characteristic  of  Cowley's  work. 
His  ambition  was  to  be  a  poet,  but  apparently  he  is  to  be 
remembered  only  as  a  writer  of  elegant  and  forcible  prose. 

Oliver  Goldsmith's  prose  has  little  of  the  poetic  quality 
that  might  be  expected  from  the  author  of  "  The  Deserted 
Village."  His  essays  are  witty,  wise,  and  agreeable.  They 
are  didactic,  and  are  aimed  frequently  at  the  weaknesses 
or  follies  of  his  age.  The  clever  idea  of  holding  the  cus- 
toms of  his  country  up  to  that  country's  ridicule  by  pre- 
tending to  look  at  them  through  the  eyes  of  a  foreigner 
did  not  originate  with  Goldsmith,  but  has  been  used  most 
effectively  by  him  in  his  essays  entitled  "  A  Citizen  of  the 
World."  These  are,  however,  so  frank  in  picturing  coarse 
and  repulsive  conditions  that  many  of  them  are  unpleasant 
reading  for  a  more  refined  era,  though  they  may  have  had 
an  influence  in  producing  that  greater  refinement. 

Nearly  all  the  essays  thus  far  mentioned  have  been 
called  forth  by  the  author's  desire  to  effect  a  change  in  his 


ESSAYS  AND   ESSAYISTS  ix 

own  time,  but  of  none  of  them  is  this  so  true  as  of  the 
splendid  oration-essay  entitled  "  The  Crisis."  Liberty  and 
literature  are  alike  indebted  to  Thomas  Paine' s  series  of 
brilliant  pamphlets. 

We  have  next  a  strong  contrast  in  Disraeli's  theme, 
drawn  as  it  is  from  the  oldest  form  of  literature — the  prov- 
erbs in  which  nations  have  unconsciously  set  down  their 
own  history  in  concrete  phrases  that  pass  current  from  lip 
to  lip.  A  falsehood  sanctioned  by  a  proverb  is  doubly  false, 
or,  rather,  doubly  mischievous ;  a  truth  in  such  a  setting  is 
likely  to  play  a  continual  part  in  history;  and  the  tracing 
of  proverbs  to  their  origin  and  through  their  adventurous 
wanderings  is  a  task  peculiarly  suited  to  the  genius  of  the 
essay. 

We  think  of  Charles  Lamb  as  the  type  of  what  the 
modern  essay  writer  should  be — genial,  gentle,  dreamy, 
poetic,  able  to  write  out  his  own  heart  and  personality,  and 
yet  reveal  no  overweening  self-confidence  or  pride  of  intel- 
lect. This  Lamb  could  do  to  perfection.  Thus  in  his  essay 
entitled  "  Imperfect  Sympathies"  he  says:  "That  the  au- 
thor of  the  '  Religio  Medici/  mounted  upon  the  airy  stilts 
of  abstraction,  conversant  about  notional  and  conjectural 
essences,  in  whose  categories  of  being  the  possible  took  the 
upper  hand  of  the  actual,  should  have  overlooked  the  im- 
pertinent personalities  of  such  poor  concretions  as  man- 
kind, is  not  much  to  be  admired.  It  is  rather  to  be  won- 
dered at  that  in  the  genus  of  animal  he  should  have  con- 
descended to  distinguish  that  species  at  all.  For  myself, 
earth-bound  and  fettered  to  the  scene  of  my  activities, 
'  standing  on  earth,  not  wrapped  above  the  sky/  I  confess 
that  I  do  feel  the  differences  of  mankind,  national  and 
individual,  to  an  unhealthy  excess.  I  can  look  with  no 
indifferent  eye  upon  things  or  persons.  Whatever  is,  is 
to  me  a  matter  of  taste  or  distaste,  for  when  once  it  becomes 
indifferent  it  begins  to  be  disrelishing.  I  am,  in  plainer 


X  ESSAYS   AND  ESSAYISTS 

words,  a  bundle  of  prejudices — made  up  of  likings  and  dis- 
likings — the  veriest  thrall  to  sympathies,  apathies,  antipa- 
thies. In  a  certain  sense  I  hope  it  may  be  said  of  me  that 
I  am  a  lover  of  my  species — I  can  feel  for  all  indifferently, 
but  I  can  not  feel  toward  all  equally.  The  more  purely 
English  word  that  expresses  my  sympathy  will  better  ex- 
press my  meaning.  I  can  be  a  friend  to  a  worthy  man, 
who  upon  another  account  can  not  be  my  mate  or  fellow. 
I  can  not  like  all  people  alike."  Lamb  himself  is  likeable 
in  both  his  likes  and  his  dislikes.  His  essays  are  of  un- 
equal merit,  and  they  are  seldom  profound  in  thought; 
but  his  life  of  hidden  self-devotion  somehow  permeated  the 
literature  through  which  it  found  relief. 

Washington  Irving  in  many  respects  suggests  Charles 
Lamb.  He  is  an  ideal  essayist  of  the  thoughtful,  sympa- 
thetic, humorous  kind.  The  man  of  leisure,  the  student 
and  writer,  was  rare  in  our  country  when  Irving  published 
his  earliest  work.  Literature  as  a  profession  was  not  yet 
at  home  here.  Prose  was  still  dwelling  in  its  log  cabin  as 
a  frontiersman,  and  poetry  was  in  the  air,  but  had  not 
alighted  even  in  the  tree-tops.  We  owe  much  of  the 
hearthstone  happiness  of  our  expanding  love  of  letters  to 
the  genius  that  gave  us  the  "  Sketch  Book." 

Whittier's  prose  is  too  little  known  and  read.  A  half- 
restrained  merriment  lends  a  charm  to  his  terse  and  simple 
Saxon  phrasing,  which  was  seldom  called  out  by  the  themes 
that  stirred  his  Muse.  His  wide  sympathies  appear  in  his 
range  of  subjects,  but  one  chain  of  thought  unites  them 
all — the  human  element  that  gave  interest  to  his  essentially 
philanthropic  soul. 

Whipple  is  one  of  the  strongest  essayists  our  country 
has  produced.  His  power  of  argument,  his  persuasive 
appeal,  his  elevation  of  thought  and  elegance  of  language, 
render  him  a  fireside  writer  of  commanding  interest.  His 
work  has  also  some  essentials  of  the  oration;  it  is  forcible 


ESSAYS   AND   ESSAYISTS  xi 

when  used  as  an  address.  The  best  essays  lend  themselves 
peculiarly  to  loud  reading,  and  none  more  so  than  those 
of  Whipple. 

Religious  themes  are  not  often  chosen  by  the  essayist, 
and  for  that  reason  we  are  the  more  indebted  to  one  who 
presents  a  single  spiritual  idea  in  fascinating  form.  This 
Principal  Shairp  has  done.  His  beautiful  essay  appears  to 
grow  naturally  out  of  a  securely  rooted  affection  for  the 
truth.  The  task  he  set  himself  was,  to  use  his  own  words, 
"  to  offer  such  suggestions  as  have  been  gathered  from 
a  number  of  years  not  unobservant  of  what  has  been  going 
on  in  that  borderland  where  faith  and  knowledge  meet." 
This  field  is  apparently  the  one  next  to  be  gleaned  by  the 
student,  and  such  trained  knowledge  and  intelligent  faith 
as  Shairp's  are  of  great  value  therein. 

Lowell  did  many  things  well,  and  some  supremely  well. 
It  seems  to  me  not  only  that  he  is  the  greatest  American 
poet,  but  that  his  "  Commemoration  Ode  "  is  the  finest 
elegiac  poem  in  our  language.  I  also  believe  he  leads 
his  countrymen  as  an  essayist  of  the  fireside.  He  is  not 
an  orator  in  prose;  he  is  a  philosopher  and  a  dreamer.  He 
is  singularly  humorous,  is  forcible,  full  of  conviction,  and 
has  a  lover's  instinct  in  making  language  serve  occasion. 
His  later  political  essays  are  inferior  to  his  earlier  work. 

Matthew  Arnold's  "  Sweetness  and  Light "  has  been 
so  thoroughly  discussed  that  added  words  are  needless, 
except  to  say  that  it  seems  to  stand  as  the  mouthpiece  of 
that  philanthropic  socialism  which  has  held  a  place  among 
a  large  body  of  England's  literary  men  for  many  years, 
and  which,  in  this  country  at  least,  in  municipal  socialism, 
seems  to  be  tending  rapidly  to  unite  with  the  state  social- 
ism against  which  at  the  outset  it  protested.  Arnold  says, 
"  The  men  of  culture  are  the  true  apostles  of  equality." 
This  remains  to  be  proved,  but  the  essay  here  given  is  a 
notable  plea  in  its  favour. 


xii  ESSAYS  AND   ESSAYISTS 

There  are  few  essayists  among  women,  but  Gail  Hamil- 
ton found  this  form  of  literature  exactly  suited  to  the  cast 
of  her  mind.  She  is  a  natural  essay  writer,  and  gives  us 
humour,  pathos,  good  sense,  and  suggestion  in  a  proverb- 
like  fashion  that  is  quite  her  own.  She  has  more  nearly 
made  a  fine  art  of  quotation  than  has  any  other  writer 
whom  I  recall.  The  homely  Saxon  of  her  essays  never 
descends  to  the  commonplace,  and  often  rises  to  eloquence. 
What  she  says  remains  in  the  memory;  it  is  not  given  to 
playing  hide-and-go-seek  with  the  reader.  She  herself  is 
eminently  quotable,  and  she  puts  the  reader  at  once  en 
rapport  with  her  own  mood.  Hers  is  not  the  form  of  essay 
that  arouses  questioning  and  sets  one  thinking.  We  take 
her  word  for  it,  however  startling  and  original  her  propo- 
sitions. This  is  a  rare  art  in  an  essayist,  and  is  worthy 
of  profounder  themes  than  those  on  which  Gail  Hamil- 
ton usually  wrote. 

Richard  Jefferies  presents  a  fine  specimen  of  the  highly 
ornamented  essay.  The  loving  student  of  Nature  has 
always  found  responsive  minds,  and  the  world  cherishes 
White's  "Selborne"  and  Walton's  "Complete  Angler" 
for  the  sake  of  the  thing  interpreted  as  much  as  for  the 
method  of  interpretation. 

In  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  we  lost  an  almost  ideal 
essayist.  His  pictures  of  Nature  and  art  and  life  come 
naturally  into  the  fireside  world.  When  one  has  read  them 
in  solitude  he  feels  that  he  can  not  rest  until  he  has  read 
them  aloud  with  a  congenial  friend.  Stevenson  is  gay  and 
tender,  picturesque,  suggestive,  illuminating.  Will  not 
some  children  of  a  future  generation  be  better  understood 
and  more  wisely  guided  because  of  a  glimpse  of  the  child's 
world  seen  through  his  soul  window,  with  its  transparent 
setting  of  pure  English  words? 

The  essay  is  a  happy  form  of  literature.  It  gains  mel- 
lowness with  age,  and  yet  keeps  the  freshness  of  youth. 


ESSAYS  AND  ESSAYISTS  xiii 

And  it  is  perhaps  the  most  democratic  of  all  forms,  for 
there  is  no  supreme  essayist  towering  above  his  fellows. 
This  throws  a  peculiar  interest  about  the  essay,  and  makes 
explicable  its  many  decadences  and  revivals.  It  is  now 
in  fashion,  and  now  out  of  fashion,  to  write  essays  or  to 
read  them;  and  this  state  of  things  is  likely  to  continue 
until  some  future  crisis  calls  forth  a  many-sided  genius 
who  shall  fulfil  all  the  conditions  of  the  perfect  essay. 

HELEN  KENDRICK  JOHNSON. 


CONTENTS 

OF  THE  INSTITUTION  AND  EDUCATION  OF  CHILDREN  PAGB 

By  Michel  Eyquem  de  Montaigne        ......        i 

THE  DEFENCE  OF  POESY 

By  Sir  Philip  Sidney 47 

AREOPAGITICA  :  A  SPEECH  FOR  THE  LIBERTY  OF  UNLICENSED 

PRINTING 
By  John  Milton 99 

A  DISCOURSE,  BY  WAY  OF  VISION,  CONCERNING  THE  GOVERN- 
MENT OF  OLIVER  CROMWELL 
By  Abraham  Cowley 147 

OF  REWARDING  GENIUS  IN  ENGLAND 

By  Oliver  Goldsmith 183    '•• 

COMMON  SENSE 

By  Thomas  Paine 195 

THE  CRISIS 

By  Thomas  Paine 228 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  PROVERBS 

By  Isaac  Disraeli 237 

A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS 

By  Charles  Lamb 275 

THE  CONVALESCENT 

By  Charles  Lamb 285 

RURAL  FUNERALS 

By  Washington  Irving 29* 


xvi  GREAT  ESSAYS 

THOMAS  ELLWOOD  PAGE 

By  John  Greenleaf  Whittier 3°3 

ON  A  CERTAIN  CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS 

By  James  Russell  Lowell 329 

INTELLECTUAL  HEALTH  AND  DISEASE 

By  Edwin  Percy  Whipple 355 

HINDRANCES  TO  SPIRITUAL  GROWTH 

By  John  Campbell  Shairp 379 

SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT 

By  Matthew  Arnold 397 

A  COMPLAINT  OF  FRIENDS 

By  Gail  Hamilton 427 

THE  PAGEANT  OF  SUMMER 

By  Richard  Jefferies 447 

CHILD'S  PLAY 

By  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 467 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 
PAGE 

MICHEL  EYQUEM  DE  MONTAIGNE Frontispiece 

From  an  engraving  by  Augustin  de  St.  Aubin. 

SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY       52 

From  an  engraving  after  a  painting  by  Isaac  Oliver. 

CHARLES  LAMB 282 

From  an  etching  after  a  painting  by  Henry  Meyer. 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 338 

From  an  engraving  by  Alfred  B.  Hall. 

ROBERT  Louis  STEVENSON 47 2 

From  an  etching  by  Samuel  Hollyer. 


OF  THE 

INSTITUTION  AND  EDUCATION 
OF  CHILDREN 

BY 

MICHEL   EYQUEM   DE   MONTAIGNE 
TRANSLATED   BY  JOHN   FLORIO 


MICHEL  EYQUEM  DE  MONTAIGNE  was  born  at  his  father's  chateau,  in 
the  old  province  of  Perigord,  France,  February  28,  1533.  The  boy  had  a 
German  tutor  who  could  not  speak  French,  and  many  of  those  about  him 
were  required  by  his  eccentric  father  to  learn  Latin,  that  his  son  might 
become  familiar  with  that  tongue,  in  which,  it  is  said,  he  was  able  to  con- 
verse at  the  age  of  six.  He  was  sent  to  college  at  Bordeaux,  and  then 
studied  law.  He  succeeded  to  the  estate  and  retired  from  business  at  the 
age  of  thirty-eight,  and  soon  afterward  began  to  write  his  "  Essays,"  the 
first  edition  of  which  appeared  in  1580.  He  was  remarkable  for  his  bad 
memory,  which  may  have  been  the  result  of  too  much  linguistic  study  in 
his  infancy  and  youth  ;  and  the  list  of  ordinary  things  that  he  could  not 
do  is  amazing.  It  is  said  that  he  could  not  swim,  fence,  carve,  guess  a 
riddle,  saddle  a  horse,  make  a  pen,  or  tell  the  use  of  the  common  agri- 
cultural implements.  He  disliked  to  read,  and  never  revised  his  manu- 
scripts. He  was  familiar  at  court,  and  was  called  to  mediate  between 
Henry  of  Navarre  and  the  Duke  of  Guise.  In  middle  life  he  travelled 
extensively  on  the  continent,  and  afterward  he  was  Mayor  of  Bordeaux 
for  four  years.  He  died  September  13,  1592.  The  two  romantic  episodes 
in  his  life  were  his  friendship  with  £tienne  la  Boetie,  who  died  early,  and 
whose  literary  remains  Montaigne  edited,  and,  in  later  life,  that  with 
Mademoiselle  de  Gournay,  who  after  his  death  published  an  excellent 
edition  of  his  "  Essays."  His  biography  has  been  written  by  Boyle  St. 
John  (1857).  JOHN  FLORIO,  the  first  translator  of  Montaigne's  "  Essays," 
was  the  son  of  an  Italian  exile,  and  was  born  in  London  about  1553.  He 
was  a  private  tutor,  did  a  large  amount  of  work  in  the  way  of  translating 
and  compiling,  and  wrote  an  Italian  and  English  dictionary.  His  trans- 
lation of  Montaigne  was  published  in  1603.  The  British  Museum  has 
two  copies  of  it,  one  containing  the  autograph  of  Ben  Jonson,  the  other 
that  of  Shakespeare.  It  is  the  only  book  that  Shakespeare  is  known  to 
have  owned,  and  some  doubt  has  been  thrown  even  on  this  autograph. 


OF   THE   INSTITUTION  AND   EDUCATION   OF 
CHILDREN 

I  NEVER  knew  father,  how  crooked  and  deformed  so- 
ever his  son  were,  that  would  either  altogether  cast  him 
off  or  not  acknowledge  him  for  his  own;  and  yet 
(unless  he  be  merely  besotted  or  blinded  in  his  affection) 
it  may  not  be  said  but  he  plainly  perceiveth  his  defects, 
and  hath  a  feeling  of  his  imperfections.  But  so  it  is,  he 
is  his  own.  So  it  is  in  myself.  I  see  better  than  any  man 
else  that  what  I  have  set  down  is  naught  but  the  fond 
imaginations  of  him  who  in  his  youth  hath  tasted  nothing 
but  the  paring,  and  seen  but  the  superfices  of  true  learn- 
ing, whereof  he  hath  retained  but  a  general  and  shapeless 
form:  a  smack  of  everything  in  general,  but  nothing  to  the 
purpose  in  particular.  After  the  French  manner.  To  be 
short,  I  know  there  is  an  art  of  physic,  a  course  of  laws, 
four  parts  of  the  mathematics,  and  I  am  not  altogether 
ignorant  what  they  tend  unto.  And  perhaps  I  also  know 
the  scope  and  drift  of  sciences  in  general  to  be  for  the 
service  of  our  life.  But  to  wade  farther,  or  that  ever  I 
tired  myself  with  plodding  upon  Aristotle  (the  monarch 
of  our  modern  doctrine),  or  obstinately  continued  in  search 
of  any  one  science,  I  confess  I  never  did  it.  Nor  is  there 
any  one  art  whereof  I  am  able  so  much  as  to  draw  the  first 
lineaments.  And  there  is  no  scholar  (be  he  of  the  lowest 
form)  that  may  not  repute  himself  wiser  than  I,  who  am 
not  able  to  oppose  him  in  his  first  lesson;  and  if  I  be  forced 
to  it,  I  am  constrained  very  impertinently  to  draw  in  matter 
from  some  general  discourse,  whereby  I  examine  and  give 
a  guess  at  his  natural  judgment:  a  lesson  as  much  unknown 
to  them  as  theirs  is  to  me.  I  have  not  dealt  or  had  com- 
merce with  any  excellent  book,  except  Plutarch  or  Seneca, 
from  whom  (as  the  Danaides)  I  draw  my  water,  incessantly 

3 


4  MONTAIGNE 

filling,  and  as  fast  emptying;  something  whereof  I  fasten 
to  this  paper,  but  to  myself  nothing  at  all.  And  touching 
bopksj  history,  is  .my  chief  study,  poesy  my  only  delight, 
to  which  I  li'mi  pairtjpularly  affected ;  for  as  Cleanthes  said, 
,tha£.  as -{he, -voice,  being-  forcibly  pent  in  the  narrow  gullet 
of  a''lram'pet' sUisi'is§iieth  forth  more  strong  and  shriller, 
so  meseems  that  a  sentence  cunningly  and  closely  couched 
in  measure-keeping  poesy  darts  itself  forth  more  furiously 
and  wounds  me  even  to  the  quick.  And  concerning  the 
natural  faculties  that  are  in  me  (whereof  behold  here  an 
essay),  I  perceive  them  to  faint  under  their  own  burden; 
my  conceits  and  my  judgment  march  but  uncertain,  and 
as  it  were  groping,  staggering,  and  stumbling  at  every 
rush.  And  when  I  have  gone  as  far  as  I  can  I  have  no 
whit  pleased  myself,  for  the  farther  I  sail  the  more  land 
I  descry,  and  that  so  dimmed  with  fogs,  and  overcast 
with  clouds,  that  my  sight  is  so  weakened  I  can  not  dis- 
tinguish the  same.  And  then  undertaking  to  speak  indif- 
ferently of  all  that  presents  itself  unto  my  fantasy,  and 
having  nothing  but  mine  own  natural  means  to  employ 
therein,  if  it  be  my  hap  (as  commonly  it  is)  among  good 
authors,  to  light  upon  those  very  places  which  I  have  un- 
dertaken to  treat  of,  as  even  now  I  did  in  Plutarch,  reading 
his  discourse  of  the  power  of  imagination,  wherein  in  re- 
gard of  those  wise  men  I  acknowledge  myself  so  weak  and 
so  poor,  so  dull  and  gross-headed,  as  I  am  forced  both  to 
pity  and  disdain  myself,  yet  am  I  pleased  with  this,  that  my 
opinions  have  often  the  grace  to  jump  with  theirs,  and 
that  I  follow  them  aloof  off,  and  thereby  possess  at  least 
that  which  all  other  men  have  not,  which  is,  that  I  know 
the  utmost  difference  between  them  and  myself;  all  which 
notwithstanding  I  suffer  my  inventions  to  run  abroad,  as 
weak  and  faint  as  I  have  produced  them,  without  bungling 
and  botching  the  faults  which  this  comparison  hath  dis- 
covered to  me  in  them.  A  man  had  need  have  a  strong 
back  to  undertake  to  march  foot  to  foot  with  this  kind  of 
men.  The  indiscreet  writers  of  our  age,  amid  their  trivial 
compositions,  intermingle  and  wrest  in  whole  sentences 
taken  from  ancient  authors,  supposing  by  such  filching 
theft  to  purchase  honour  and  reputation  to  themselves, 
do  clean  contrary.  For  this  infinite  variety  and  dissem- 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN  5 

blance  of  lustres  makes  a  face  so  wan,  so  ill-favoured,  and 
so  ugly,  in  respect  of  theirs,  that  they  lose  much  more  than 
gain  thereby.  These  were  two  contrary  humours:  the  phi- 
losopher Chrisippus  was  wont  to  foist  in  among  his  books 
not  only  whole  sentences  and  other  long-long  discourses, 
but  whole  books  of  other  authors,  as  in  one  he  brought 
in  Euripides's  "  Medea."  And  Apollodorus  was  wont  to 
say  of  him  that  if  one  should  draw  from  out  his  books  what 
he  had  stolen  from  others,  his  paper  would  remain  blank. 
Whereas  Epicurus,  clean  contrary  to  him,  in  three  hundred 
volumes  he  left  behind  him,  had  not  made  use  of  one  alle- 
gation. It  was  my  fortune  not  long  since  to  light  upon 
such  a  place:  I  had  languishingly  traced  after  some  French 
words,  so  naked  and  shallow,  and  so  void  either  of  sense 
or  matter,  that  at  last  I  found  them  to  be  naught  but  mere 
French  words;  and  after  a  tedious  and  wearisome  travel 
I  chanced  to  stumble  upon  a  high,  rich,  and  even  to  the 
clouds  raised  piece,  the  descent  whereof  had  it  been  some- 
what more  pleasant  or  easy,  or  the  ascent  reaching  a  little 
farther,  it  had  been  excusable,  and  to  be  borne  withal;  but 
it  was  such  a  steepy  downfall,  and  by  mere  strength  hewn 
out  of  the  main  rock,  that  by  reading  of  the  first  six  words 
methought  I  was  carried  into  another  world:  whereby  I 
perceive  the  bottom  whence  I  came  to  be  so  low  and  deep, 
as  I  durst  never  more  adventure  to  go  through  it;  for,  if 
I  did  stuff  any  one  of  my  discourses  with  those  rich  spoils, 
it  would  manifestly  cause  the  sottishness  of  others  to  ap- 
pear. To  reprove  mine  own  faults  in  others  seems  to  me 
no  more  insufferable  than  to  reprehend  (as  I  do  often) 
those  of  others  in  myself.  They  ought  to  be  accused  every- 
where, and  have  all  places  of  sanctuary  taken  from  them; 
yet  do  I  know  how  over-boldly  at  all  times  I  adventure 
to  equal  myself  unto  my  filchings,  and  to  march  hand  in 
hand  with  them;  not  without  a  fond  hardy  hope  that  I 
may  perhaps  be  able  to  blear  the  eyes  of  the  judges  from 
discerning  them.  But  it  is  as  much  for  the  benefit  of  my 
application  as  for  the  good  of  mine  invention  and  force. 
And  I  do  not  furiously  front,  and  body  to  body  wrestle  with 
those  old  champions:  it  is  but  by  flights,  advantages,  and 
false  offers  I  seek  to  come  within  them,  and  if  I  can  to 
give  them  a  fall.  I  do  not  rashly  take  them  about  the  neck, 


6  MONTAIGNE 

I  do  but  touch  them,  nor  do  I  go  so  far  as  by  my  bargain 
I  would  seem  to  do;  could  I  but  keep  even  with  them,  I 
should  then  be  an  honest  man;  for  I  seek  not  to  venture 
on  them,  but  where  they  are  strongest.  To  do  as  I  have 
seen  some,  that  is,  to  shroud  themselves  under  other  arms, 
not  daring  so  much  as  to  show  their  fingers'  ends  unarmed, 
and  to  botch  up  all  their  works  (as  it  is  an  easy  matter  in 
a  common  subject,  namely,  for  the  wiser  sort)  with  ancient 
inventions,  here  and  there  huddled  up  together.  And  in 
those  who  endeavoured  to  hide  what  they  have  filched 
from  others,  and  make  it  their  own,  it  is  first  a  manifest 
note  of  injustice,  then  a  plain  argument  of  cowardliness; 
who  having  nothing  of  any  worth  in  themselves  to  make 
show  of,  will  yet  under  the  countenance  of  others'  suffi- 
ciency go  about  to  make  a  fair  offer:  moreover  (oh,  great 
foolishness!),  to  seek  by  such  cozening  tricks  to  forestall 
the  ignorant  approbation  of  the  common  sort,  nothing 
fearing  to  discover  their  ignorance  to  men  of  understand- 
ing (whose  praise  only  is  of  value)  who  will  soon  trace  out 
such  borrowed  ware.  As  for  me,  there  is  nothing  I  will 
do  less.  I  never  speak  of  others  but  that  I  may  the  more 
speak  of  myself.  This  concerneth  not  those  mingle-man- 
gles  of  many  kinds  of  stuff,  or,  as  the  Grecians  call  them, 
Rhapsodies,  that  for  such  are  published,  of  which  kind 
I  have  (since  I  came  to  years  of  discretion)  seen  divers  most 
ingenious  and  witty;  among  others,  one  under  the  name 
of  Capilupus;  besides  many  of  the  ancient  stamp.  These 
are  wits  of  such  excellence  as  both  here  and  elsewhere  they 
will  soon  be  perceived,  as  our  late  famous  writer  Lipsius, 
in  his  learned  and  laborious  work  of  the  "  Politics":  yet 
whatsoever  come  of  it,  forsomuch  as  they  are  but  follies, 
my  intent  is  not  to  smother  them,  no  more  than  a  bald  and 
hoary  picture  of  mine,  where  a  painter  hath  drawn  not  a 
perfect  visage,  but  mine  own.  For,  howsoever,  these  are 
but  my  humours  and  opinions,  and  I  deliver  them  but  to 
show  what  my  conceit  is,  and  not  what  ought  to  be  be- 
lieved. Wherein  I  aim  at  nothing  but  to  display  myself, 
who  peradventure  (if  a  new  prenticeship  change  me)  shall 
be  another  to-morrow.  I  have  no  authority  to  purchase 
belief,  neither  do  I  desire  it;  knowing  well  that  I  am  not 
sufficiently  taught  to  instruct  others.  Some,  having  read 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN  7 

my  precedent  chapter,  told  me  not  long  since,  in  mine 
own  house,  I  should  somewhat  more  have  extended  myself 
in  the  discourse  concerning  the  institution  of  children. 
Now,  madam,  if  there  were  any  sufficiency  in  me  touching 
that  subject,  I  could  not  better  employ  the  same  than  to 
bestow  it  as  a  present  upon  that  little  lad,  which  ere  long 
threateneth  to  make  a  happy  issue  from  out  your  honour- 
able womb;  for,  madam,  you  are  too  generous  to  begin 
with  other  than  a  man  child.  And  having  had  so  great 
a  part  in  the  conduct  of  your  successful  marriage,  I  may 
challenge  some  right  and  interest  in  the  greatness  and 
prosperity  of  all  that  shall  proceed  from  it:  moreover,  the 
ancient  and  rightful  possession,  which  you  from  time  to 
time  have  ever  had,  and  still  have,  over  my  service,  urgeth 
me,  with  more  than  ordinary  respects,  to  wish  all  honour, 
welfare,  and  advantage  to  whatsoever  may  in  any  sort  con- 
cern you  and  yours.  And  truly  my  meaning  is  but  to 
show  that  the  greatest  difficulty,  and  importing  all  human 
knowledge,  seemeth  to  be  in  this  point,  where  the  nurture 
and  institution  of  young  children  is  in  question.  For,  as 
in  matters  of  husbandry,  the  labour  that  must  be  used  be- 
fore sowing,  setting,  and  planting — yea,  in  planting  itself — 
is  most  certain  and  easy.  But  when  that  which  was  sown, 
set,  and  planted  cometh  to  take  life,  before  it  come  to 
ripeness  much  ado  and  great  variety  of  proceeding  be- 
longeth  to  it.  So  in  men;  it  is  no  great  matter  to  get 
them,  but,  being  born,  what  continual  cares,  what  diligent 
attendance,  what  doubts  and  fears,  do  daily  wait  to  their 
parents  and  tutors,  before  they  can  be  nurtured  and  brought 
to  any  good !  The  foreshow  of  their  inclination  while  they 
are  young  is  so  uncertain,  their  humours  so  variable,  their 
promises  so  changing,  their  hopes  so  false,  and  their  pro- 
ceedings so  doubtful,  that  it  is  very  hard  (yea,  for  the 
wisest)  to  ground  any  certain  judgment  or  assured  success 
upon  them.  Behold  Cymon,  view  Themistocles,  and  a 
thousand  others,  how  they  have  differed,  and  fallen  to 
better  from  themselves,  and  deceive  the  expectation  of  such 
as  knew  them.  The  young  whelps  both  of  dogs  and  bears 
at  first  sight  show  their  natural  disposition,  but  men  head- 
long embracing  this  custom  or  fashion,  following  that 
humour  or  opinion,  admitting  this  or  that  passion,  allow- 


8  MONTAIGNE 

ing  of  that  or  this  law,  are  easily  changed  and  soon  dis- 
guised; yet  it  is  hard  to  force  the  natural  propension  or 
readiness  of  the  mind,  whereby  it  followeth  that  for  want 
of  heedy  foresight  in  those  that  could  not  guide  their  course 
well,  they  often  employ  much  time  in  vain  to  address  young 
children  in  those  matters  whereunto  they  are  not  naturally 
addicted.  All  which  difficulties  notwithstanding,  mine 
opinion  is,  to  bring  them  up  in  the  best  and  most  profit- 
able studies,  and  that  a  man  should  slightly  pass  over  those 
fond  presages  and  deceiving  prognostics  which  we  over- 
precisely  gather  in  their  infancy.  And  (without  offence 
be  it  said)  methinks  that  Plato  in  his  "  Commonwealth  " 
allowed  them  too-too  much  authority. 

Madam,  learning  joined  with  true  knowledge  is  an 
especial  and  graceful  ornament,  and  an  implement  of  won- 
derful use  and  consequence — namely,  in  persons  raised  to 
that  degree  of  fortune  wherein  you  are.  And,  in  good 
truth,  Learning  hath  not  her  own  true  form,  nor  can  she 
make  show  of  her  beauteous  lineaments  if  she  fall  into 
the  hands  of  base  and  vile  persons.  [For,  as  famous  Tor- 
quato  Tasso  saith:  "  Philosophy  being  a  rich  and  noble 
queen,  and  knowing  her  own  worth,  graciously  smileth 
upon  and  lovingly  embraceth  princes  and  noblemen  if  they 
become  suitors  to  her,  admitting  them  as  her  minions,  and 
gently  affording  them  all  the  favours  she  can;  whereas, 
upon  the  contrary,  if  she  be  wooed  and  sued  unto  by 
clowns,  mechanical  fellows,  and  such  base  kind  of  people, 
she  holds  herself  disparaged  and  disgraced,  as  holding  no 
proportion  with  them.  And  therefore  see  we  by  experi- 
ence that  if  a  true  gentleman  or  nobleman  follow  her  with 
any  attention,  and  wooed  her  with  importunity,  he  shall 
learn  and  know  more  of  her,  and  prove  a  better  scholar 
in  one  year  than  an  ungentle  or  base  fellow  shall  in  seven, 
though  he  pursue  her  never  so  attentively."]  She  is  much 
more  ready  and  fierce  to  lend  her  furtherance  and  direction 
in  the  conduct  of  a  war,  to  attempt  honourable  actions, 
to  command  a  people,  to  treat  a  peace  with  a  prince  of 
foreign  nation,  than  she  is  to  form  an  argument  in  logic, 
to  devise  a  syllogism,  to  canvass  a  case  at  the  bar,  or  to 
prescribe  a  receipt  of  pills.  So  (noble  lady)  forsomuch  as 
I  can  not  persuade  myself  that  you  will  either  forget  or 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN  9 

neglect  this  point,  concerning  the  institution  of  yours, 
especially  having  tasted  the  sweetness  thereof,  and  being 
descended  of  so  noble  and  learned  a  race — for  we  yet  pos- 
sess the  learned  compositions  of  the  ancient  and  noble 
Earls  of  Foix,  from  out  whose  heroic  loins  your  husband 
and  you  take  your  offspring;  and  Francis,  Lord  of  Can- 
dale,  your  worthy  uncle,  doth  daily  bring  forth  such  fruits 
thereof  as  the  knowledge  of  the  matchless  quality  of  your 
house  shall  hereafter  extend  itself  to  many  ages — I  will 
therefore  make  you  acquainted  with  one  conceit  of  mine, 
which  is  contrary  to  the  common  use  I  hold,  and  that  is  all 
I  am  able  to  afford  you  concerning  that  matter,  the  charge 
of  the  tutor  which  you  shall  appoint  your  son,  in  the  choice 
of  whom  consisteth  the  whole  substance  of  his  education 
and  bringing  up;  on  which  are  many  branches  depending, 
which  (forasmuch  as  I  can  add  nothing  of  any  moment 
to  it)  I  will  not  touch  at  all.  And  for  that  point,  wherein 
I  presume  to  advise  him,  he  may  so  far  forth  give  credit 
unto  it  as  he  shall  see  just  cause.  To  a  gentleman  born 
of  noble  parentage,  and  heir  of  a  house  that  aimeth  at  true 
learning,  and  in  it  would  be  disciplined,  not  so  much  for 
game  or  commodity  to  himself  (because  so  abject  an  end 
is  far  unworthy  the  grace  and  favour  of  the  Muses,  and 
besides  hath  a  regard  or  dependency  of  others),  nor  for 
external  show  and  ornament,  but  to  adorn  and  enrich  his 
inward  mind,  desiring  rather  to  shape  and  institute  an  able 
and  sufficient  man  than  a  bare  learned  man;  my  desire  is 
therefore  that  the  parents  or  overseers  of  such  a  gentle- 
man be  very  circumspect  and  careful  in  choosing  his  di- 
rector, whom  I  would  rather  commend  for  having  a  well- 
composed  and  temperate  brain  than  a  full-stuffed  head, 
yet  both  will  do  well.  And  I  would  rather  prefer  wisdom, 
judgment,  civil  customs,  and  modest  behaviour  than  bare 
and  mere  literal  learning;  and  that  in  his  charge  he  hold 
a  new  course.  Some  never  cease  brawling  in  their  schol- 
ars' ears  (as  if  they  were  still  pouring  in  a  tunnel)  to  follow 
their  book,  yet  is  their  charge  nothing  else  but  to  repeat 
what  hath  been  told  them  before.  I  would  have  a  tutor 
to  correct  this  part,  and  that  at  first  entrance,  according 
to  the  capacity  of  the  wit  he  hath  in  hand,  he  should  begin 
to  make  show  of  it,  making  him  to  have  a  smack  of  all 


I0  MONTAIGNE 

things,  and  how  to  choose  and  distinguish  them,  without 
help  of  others,  sometimes  opening  him  the  way,  other  times 
leaving  him  to  open  it  by  himself.  I  would  not  have  him 
to  invent  and  speak  alone,  but  suffer  his  disciple  to  speak 
when  his  turn  cometh.  Socrates,  and  after  him  Arcesilaus, 
made  their  scholars  to  speak  first,  and  then  would  speak 
themselves.  Obest  plerumque  iis  qui  discere  volunt, 
auctoritas  eorum  qui  docent l — "  Most  commonly  the  au- 
thority of  them  that  teach  hinders  them  that  would  learn." 
It  is  therefore  meet  that  he  make  him  first  trot  on  before 
him,  whereby  he  may  the  better  judge  of  his  pace,  and 
so  guess  how  long  he  will  hold  out,  that  accordingly  he 
may  fit  his  strength,  for  want  of  which  proportion  we  often 
mar  all.  And  to  know  how  to  make  a  good  choice,  and 
how  far  forth  one  may  proceed  (still  keeping  a  due  meas- 
ure), is  one  of  the  hardest  labours  I  know.  It  is  a  sign 
of  a  noble,  and  effect  of  an  undaunted  spirit,  to  know  how 
to  second,  and  how  far  forth  he  shall  condescend  to  his 
childish  proceedings,  and  how  to  guide  them.  As  for 
myself,  I  can  better  and  with  more  strength  walk  up  than 
down  a  hill.  Those  who,  according  to  our  common  fash- 
ion, undertake  with  one  selfsame  lesson,  and  like  manner 
of  education,  to  direct  many  spirits  of  divers  forms  and 
different  humours,  it  is  no  marvel  if  among  a  multitude 
of  children  they  scarce  meet  with  two  or  three  that  reap 
any  good  fruit  by  their  discipline,  or  that  come  to  any 
perfection.  I  would  not  only  have  him  to  demand  an 
account  of  the  words  contained  in  his  lesson,  but  of  the 
sense  and  substance  thereof,  and  judge  of  the  profit  he 
hath  made  of  it,  not  by  the  testimony  of  his  memory,  but 
by  the  witness  of  his  life.  That  what  he  lately  learned  he 
causes  him  to  set  forth  and  portray  the  same  into  sundry 
shapes,  and  then  to  accommodate  it  to  as  many  different 
and  several  subjects,  whereby  he  shall  perceive  whether  he 
have  yet  apprehended  the  same,  and  therein  enfeoffed  him- 
self, at  due  times  taking  his  instruction  from  the  institution 
given  by  Plato.  It  is  a  sign  of  crudity  and  indigestion  for 
a  man  to  yield  up  his  meat  even  as  he  swallowed  the  same; 
the  stomach  hath  not  wrought  its  full  operation  unless  it 
has  changed  form  and  altered  fashion  of  that  which  was 
given  him  to  boil  and  concoct. 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN  n 

We  see  men  gape  after  no  reputation  but  learning,  and 
when  they  say  such  a  one  is  a  learned  man,  they  think  they 
have  said  enough.  Our  mind  doth  move  at  others'  pleasure, 
and  tied  and  forced  to  serve  the  fantasies  of  others,  being 
brought  under  by  authority,  and  forced  to  stoop  to  the  lure 
of  their  bare  lesson;  we  have  been  so  subjected  to  harp  upon 
one  string  that  we  have  no  way  left  us  to  descant  upon  vol- 
untary; our  vigour  and  liberty  are  clean  extinct.  Nunquam 
tutelse  suae  fiunt—  '  They  never  come  to  their  own  tuition." 
It  was  my  hap  to  be  familiarly  acquainted  with  an  honest 
man  at  Pisa,  but  such  an  Aristotelian  as  he  held  this  infal- 
lible position,  that  a  conformity  to  Aristotle's  doctrine  was 
the  true  touchstone  and  square  of  all  solid  imaginations  and 
perfect  verity;  for  whatsoever  had  no  coherency  with  it  was 
but  fond  chimeras  and  idle  humours;  inasmuch  as  he  had 
known  all,  seen  all,  and  said  all.  This  proposition  of  his  be- 
ing somewhat  over-amply  and  injuriously  interpreted  by 
some  made  him  a  long  time  after  to  be  troubled  in  the  In- 
quisition of  Rome.  I  would  have  him  make  his  scholar  nar- 
rowly to  sift  all  things  with  discretion,  and  harbour  nothing 
in  his  head  by  mere  authority  or  upon  trust.  Aristotle's 
principles  shall  be  no  more  axioms  unto  him  than  the  Stoics 
or  Epicureans.  Let  this  diversity  of  judgments  be  pro- 
posed unto  him:  if  he  can,  he  shall  be  able  to  distinguish 
the  truth  from  falsehood;  if  not,  he  will  remain  doubtful. 

Che  non  men  che  saper  dubbiar  m'aggrata." 
"  No  less  it  pleaseth  me 
To  doubt,  than  wise  to  be." 

For  if  by  his  own  discourse  he  embrace  the  opinions  of 
Xenophon  or  of  Plato,  they  shall  be  no  longer  theirs,  but 
his.  He  that  merely  followeth  another  traceth  nothing, 
and  seeketh  nothing:  Non  sumus  sub  Rege,  sibi  quisque  se 
vindicet  3 — "We  are  not  under  a  king's  command;  every 
one  may  challenge  himself,  for  let  him  at  least  know  that 
he  knoweth."  It  is  requisite  he  endeavour  as  much  to 
feed  himself  with  their  conceits  as  labour  to  learn  their  pre- 
cepts; which,  so  he  know  how  to  apply,  let  him  hardly 
forget  where  or  whence  he  had  them.  Truth  and  reason 
are  common  to  all,  and  are  no  more  proper  unto  him  that 
spake  them  heretofore  than  unto  him  that  shall  speak  them 


12  MONTAIGNE 

hereafter.  And  it  is  no  mgre  according  to  Plato's  opinion 
than  to  mine,  since  both  he  and  I  understand  and  see  alike. 
The  bees  do  here  and  there  suckle  this  and  cull  that  flower, 
but  afterward  they  produce  the  honey,  which  is  peculiarly 
their  own,  then  is  it  no  more  thyme  or  marjoram.  So  of 
pieces  borrowed  of  others,  he  may  lawfully  alter,  transform, 
and  confound  them,  to  shape  out  of  them  a  perfect  piece 
of  work,  altogether  his  own;  always  provided  his  judg- 
ment, his  travel,  study,  and  institution  tend  to  nothing  but 
to  frame  the  same  perfect.  Let  him  hardly  conceal  where 
or  whence  he  hath  had  any  help,  and  make  no  show  of 
anything,  but  of  that  which  he  hath  made  himself.  Pirates, 
pilchers,  and  borrowers  make  a  show  of  their  purchases  and 
buildings,  but  not  of  that  which  they  have  taken  from 
others:  you  see  not  the  secret  fees  or  bribes  lawyers  take 
of  their  clients,  but  you  shall  manifestly  discover  the  alli- 
ances they  make,  the  honours  they  get  for  their  children, 
and  the  goodly  nouses  they  build.  No  man  makes  open 
show  of  his  receipts,  but  every  one  of  his  gettings.  The 
good  that  comes  of  study  (or  at  least  should  come)  is  to 
prove  better,  wiser,  and  honester.  It  is  the  understanding 
power  (said  Epicharmus)  that  seeth  and  heareth,  it  is  it 
that  profiteth  all  and  disposeth  all,  that  moveth,  swayeth, 
and  ruleth  all:  all  things  else  are  but  blind,  senseless,  and 
without  spirit.  And  truly  in  barring  him  of  liberty  to  do 
anything  of  himself  we  make  him  thereby  more  servile  and 
more  coward.  Who  would  ever  inquire  of  his  scholar  what 
he  thinketh  of  rhetoric,  of  grammar,  of  this  or  of  that 
sentence  of  Cicero?  Which  things  thoroughly  feathered 
(as  if  they  were  oracles)  are  let  fly  into  our  memory;  in 
which  both  letters  and  syllables  are  substantial  parts  of 
the  subject.  To  know  by  rote  is  no  perfect  knowledge, 
but  to  keep  what  one  hath  committed  to  his  memory's 
charge  is  commendable:  what  a  man  directly  knoweth  that 
will  he  dispose  of,  without  turning  still  to  his  book  or 
looking  to  his  pattern.  A  mere  bookish  sufficiency  is  un- 
pleasant. All  I  expect  of  it  is  an  embellishing  of  my 
actions,  and  not  a  foundation  of  them,  according  to  Plato's 
mind,  who  saith  constancy,  faith,  and  sincerity  are  true  phi- 
losophy; as  for  other  sciences,  and  tending  elsewhere,  they 
are  but  garish  paintings.  I  would  fain  have  Paluel  or  Pom- 


EDUCATION   OF  CHILDREN  !3 

pey,  those  two  excellent  dancers  of  our  time,  with  all  their 
nimbleness,  teach  any  man  to  do  their  lofty  tricks  and 
high  capers,  only  with  seeing  them  done,  and  without  stir- 
ring out  of  his  place,  as  some  pedantical  fellows  would 
instruct  our  minds  without  moving  or  putting  it  in  prac- 
tice. And  glad  would  I  be  to  find  one  that  would  teach 
us  how  to  manage  a  horse,  to  toss  a  pike,  to  shoot  off  a 
piece,  to  play  -upon  the  lute,  or  to  warble  with  the  voice, 
without  any  exercise,  as  these  kind  of  men  would  teach  us 
to  judge,  and  how  to  speak  well,  without  any  exercise  of 
speaking  or  judging.  In  which  kind  of  life,  or,  as  I  may 
term  it,  prenticeship,  what  action  or  object  soever  presents 
itself  unto  our  eyes  may  serve  us  instead  of  a  sufficient 
book.  A  pretty  prank  of  a  boy,  a  knavish  trick  of  a  page, 
a  foolish  part  of  a  lackey,  an  idle  tale,  or  any  discourse  else, 
spoken  either  in  jest  or  earnest,  at  the  table  or  in  company, 
are  even  as  new  subjects  for  us  to  work  upon:  for  further- 
ance whereof  commerce  or  common  society  among  men, 
visiting  of  foreign  countries,  and  observing  of  strange  fash- 
ions are  very  necessary,  not  only  to  be  able  (after  the  man- 
ner of  our  young  gallants  of  France)  to  report  how  many 
paces  the  Church  of  Santa  Rotonda  is  in  length  or  breadth; 
or  what  rich  garments  the  courtesan  Signora  Livia  wear- 
eth,  and  the  worth  of  her  hosen;  or,  as  some  do,  nicely  to 
dispute  how  much  longer  or  broader  the  face  of  Nero  is 
which  they  have  seen  in  some  old  ruins  of  Italy  than  that 
which  is  made  for  him  in  other  old  monuments  elsewhere. 
But  they  should  principally  observe  and  be  able  to  make 
certain  relation  of  the  humours  and  fashions  of  those  coun- 
tries they  have  seen,  that  they  may  the  better  know  how 
to  correct  and  prepare  their  wits  by  those  of  others.  I 
would  therefore  have  him  begin  even  from  his  infancy  to 
travel  abroad;  and  first,  that  at  one  shoot  he  may  hit  two 
marks,  he  should  see  neighbour  countries,  namely,  where 
languages  are  most  different  from  ours;  for  unless  a  man's 
tongue  be  fashioned  unto  them  in  his  youth,  he  shall  never 
attain  to  the  true  pronunciation  of  them  if  he  once  grow 
in  years.  Moreover,  we  see  it  received  as  a  common  opin- 
ion of  the  wiser  sort,  that  it  agreeth  not  with  reason  that 
a  child  be  always  nuzzled,  cockered,  dandled,  and  brought 
up  in  his  parents'  lap  or  sight;  forsomuch  as  their  natural 


14  MONTAIGNE 

kindness,  or  (as  I  may  call  it)  tender  fondness,  causeth 
often  even  the  wisest  to  prove  so  idle,  so  overnice,  and 
so  base-minded.  For  parents  are  not  capable,  neither  can 
they  find  in  their  hearts  to  see  them  checked,  corrected, 
or  chastised,  nor  endure  to  see  them  brought  up  so  meanly, 
and  so  far  from  daintiness,  and  many  times  so  dangerously, 
as  they  must  needs  be.  And  it  would  grieve  them  to  see 
their  children  come  home  from  those  exercises  that  a  gen- 
tleman must  necessarily  acquaint  himself  with,  sometimes 
all  wet  and  bemired,  other  times  sweaty  and  full  of  dust, 
and  to  drink  being  either  extreme  hot  or  exceeding  cold; 
and  it  would  trouble  them  to  see  him  ride  a  rough,  un- 
tamed horse,  or  with  his  weapon  furiously  encounter  a  skil- 
ful fencer,  or  to  handle  or  shoot  off  a  musket;  against  which 
there  is  no  remedy,  if  he  will  make  him  prove  a  sufficient, 
complete,  or  honest  man:  he  must  not  be  spared  in  his 
youth;  and  it  will  come  to  pass  that  he  shall  many  times 
have  occasion  and  be  forced  to  shock  the  rules  of  physic. 

Vitamque  sub  dio  et  trepidis  agat 
In  rebus.4 

"  Lead  he  his  life  in  open  air, 
And  in  affairs  full  of  despair." 

It  is  not  sufficient  to  make  his  mind  strong,  his  muscles 
must  also  be  strengthened:  the  mind  is  over-borne  if  it  be 
not  seconded;  and  it  is  too  much  for  her  alone  to  discharge 
two  offices.  I  have  a  feeling  how  mine  panteth,  being 
joined  to  so  tender  and  sensible  a  body,  and  that  lieth  so 
heavy  upon  it.  And  in  my  lecture  I  often  perceive  how 
my  authors  in  their  writings  sometimes  commend  exam- 
ples for  magnanimity  and  force,  that  rather  proceed  from 
a  thick  skin  and  hardness  of  the  bones.  I  have  known  men, 
women,  and  children  born  of  so  hard  a  constitution  that 
a  blow  with  a  cudgel  would  less  hurt  them  than  a  fillip 
would  do  me,  and  so  dull  and  blockish  that  they  will  nei- 
ther stir  tongue  nor  eyebrows,  beat  them  never  so  much. 
When  wrestlers  go  about  to  counterfeit  the  philosophers' 
patience,  they  rather  show  the  vigour  of  their  sinews  than 
of  their  heart.  For  the  custom  to  bear  travail  is  to  tolerate 
grief:  Labor  callum  obducit  dolori  5 — "  Labour  worketh 
a  hardness  upon  sorrow/'  He  must  be  inured  to  suffer 
the  pain  and  hardness  of  exercises  that  so  he  may  be  in- 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN  r$ 

duced  to  endure  the  pain  of  the  colic,  of  cautery,  of  falls, 
of  sprains,  and  other  diseases  incident  to  man's  body:  yea, 
if  need  require,  patiently  to  bear  imprisonment  and  other 
tortures,  by  which  sufferance  he  shall  come  to  be  had  in 
more  esteem  and  account;  for  according  to  time  and  place 
the  good  as  well  as  the  bad  man  may  haply  fall  into  them; 
we  have  seen  it  by  experience.  Whosoever  striveth  against 
the  laws  threatens  good  men  with  mischief  and  extortion. 
Moreover,  the  authority  of  the  tutor  (who  should  be  sover- 
eign over  him)  is  by  the  cockering  and  presence  of  the 
parents  hindered  and  interrupted:  besides  the  awe  and  re- 
spect which  the  household  bears  him,  and  the  knowledge 
of  the  means,  possibilities,  and  greatness  of  his  house,  are 
in  my  judgment  no  small  lets  in  a  young  gentleman.  In 
this  school  of  commerce  and  society  among  men  I  have 
often  noted  this  vice,  that  in  lieu  of  taking  acquaintance 
of  others  we  only  endeavour  to  make  ourselves  known  to 
them;  and  we  are  more  ready  to  utter  such  merchandise 
as  we  have  than  to  engross  and  purchase  new  commodities. 
Silence  and  modesty  are  qualities  very  convenient  to  civil 
conversation.  It  is  also  necessary  that  a  young  man  be 
rather  taught  to  be  discreetly  sparing  and  close-handed 
than  prodigally  wasteful  and  lavish  in  his  expenses,  and 
moderate  in  husbanding  his  wealth  when  he  shall  come 
to  possess  it.  And  not  to  take  pepper  in  the  nose  for 
every  foolish  tale  that  shall  be  spoken  in  his  presence, 
because  it  is  an  uncivil  importunity  to  contradict  what- 
soever is  not  agreeing  to  our  humour:  let  him  be  pleased 
to  correct  himself.  And  let  him  not  seem  to  blame  that 
in  others  which  he  refuseth  to  do  himself,  nor  go  about 
to  withstand  common  fashions,  Licet  sapere  sine  pompa, 
sine  invidia  6 — "  A  man  may  be  wise  without  ostentation, 
without  envy."  Let  him  avoid  those  imperious  images 
of  the  world,  those  uncivil  behaviours  and  childish  ambi- 
tion wherewith,  God  wot,  too  too  many  are  possessed; 
that  is,  to  make  a  fair  show  of  that  which  is  not  in  him; 
endeavouring  to  be  reputed  other  than  indeed  he  is;  and 
as  if  reprehension  and  new  devices  were  hard  to  come  by, 
he  would  by  that  means  acquire  unto  himself  the  name 
of  some  peculiar  virtue.  As  it  pertaineth  but  to  great 
poets  to  use  the  liberty  of  arts,  so  is  it  tolerable  but  in 


l6  MONTAIGNE 

noble  minds  and  great  spirits  to  have  a  pre-eminence  above 
ordinary  fashions.  Si  quid  Socrates  et  Aristippus  contra 
morem  et  consuetudinem  fecerunt,  idem  sibi  ne  arbitretur 
licere;  Magis  enim  illi  et  divinis  bonis  hanc  licentiam  asse- 
quebantur 7 — "  If  Socrates  and  Aristippus  have  done  aught 
against  custom  or  good  manner,  let  not  a  man  think  he 
may  do  the  same;  for  they  obtained  this  license  by  their 
great  and  excellent  good  part.".  He  shall  be  taught  not 
to  enter  rashly  into  discourse  or  contesting,  but  when  he 
shall  encounter  with  a  champion  worthy  of  his  strength. 
And  then  would  I  not  have  him  employ  all  the  tricks  that 
may  fit  his  turn,  but  only  such  as  may  stand  him  in  most 
stead.  That  he  be  taught  to  be  curious  in  making  choice 
of  his  reasons,  loving  pertinency,  and  by  consequence  brev- 
ity. That,  above  all,  he  be  instructed  to  yield,  yea,  to  quit 
his  weapons  unto  truth,  as  soon  as  he  shall  discern  the 
same,  whether  it  proceed  from  his  adversary  or  upon  bet- 
ter advice  from  himself;  for  he  shall  not  be  preferred  to 
any  place  of  eminence  above  others  for  repeating  of  a 
prescribed  part;  and  he  is  not  engaged  to  defend  any 
cause  further  than  he  may  approve  it;  nor  shall  he  be 
of  that  trade  where  the  liberty  for  a  man  to  repent  and 
readvise  himself  is  sold  for  ready  money.  Neque,  ut 
omnia,  que  praescripta  et  imperata  sint,  defendat,  necessi- 
tate ulla  cogitur  8 — "  Nor  is  he  enforced  by  any  necessity 
to  defend  and  make  good  all  that  is  prescribed  and  com- 
manded him."  If  his  tutor  agree  with  my  humour,  he 
shall  frame  his  affection  to  be  a  most  loyal  and  true  sub- 
ject to  his  prince,  and  a  most  affectionate  and  courageous 
gentleman  in  all  that  may  concern  the  honour  of  his  sover- 
eign or  the  good  of  his  country,  and  endeavour  to  sup- 
press in  him  all  manner  of  affection  to  undertake  any 
action  otherwise  than  for  a  public  good  and  duty.  Besides 
many  inconveniences,  which  greatly  prejudice  our  liberty 
by  reason  of  these  particular  bonds,  the  judgment  of  a 
man  that  is  waged  and  bought,  either  it  is  less  free  and 
honest,  or  else  it  is  blemished  with  oversight  and  ingrati- 
tude. A  mere  and  precise  courtier  can  neither  have  law 
nor  will  to  speak  or  think  otherwise  than  favourably  of 
his  master,  who  among  so  many  thousands  of  his  subjects 
hath  made  choice  of  him  alone,  to  institute  and  bring  him 


EDUCATION   OF  CHILDREN  i; 

up  with  his  own  hand.  These  favours,  with  the  commodi- 
ties that  follow  minion  courtiers,  corrupt  (not  without 
some  colour  of  reason)  his  liberty  and  dazzle  his  judg- 
ment. It  is  therefore  commonly  seen  that  the  courtier's 
language  differs  from  other  men's  in  the  same  state,  and 
to  be  of  no  great  credit  in  such  matters.  Let,  therefore, 
his  conscience  and  virtue  shine  in  his  speech,  and  reason 
be  his  chief  direction.  Let  him  be  taught  to  confess  such 
faults  as  he  shall  discover  in  his  own  discourses,  albeit  none 
other  perceive  them  but  himself;  for  it  is  an  evident  show 
of  judgment  and  effect  of  sincerity  which  are  the  chiefest 
qualities  he  aimeth  at.  That  wilfully  to  strive  and  obsti- 
nately to  contest  in  words,  are  common  qualities,  most 
apparent  in  basest  minds;  that  to  readvise  and  correct  him- 
self, and  when  one  is  most  earnest,  to  leave  an  ill  opinion, 
are  rare,  noble,  and  philosophical  conditions.  Being  in 
company,  he  shall  be  put  in  mind  to  cast  his  eyes  round 
about  and  everywhere;  for  I  note  that  the  chief  places 
are  usually  seized  upon  by  the  most  unworthy  and  less 
capable,  and  that  height  of  fortune  is  seldom  joined  with 
sufficiency.  I  have  seen  that  while  they  at  the  upper  end 
of  a  board  were  busy  entertaining  themselves  with  talking 
of  the  beauty  of  the  hangings  about  a  chamber,  or  of  the 
taste  of  some  good  cup  of  wine,  many  good  discourses 
at  the  lower  end  have  utterly  been  lost.  He  shall  weigh 
the  carriage  of  every  man  in  his  calling,  a  herdsman,  a 
mason,  a  stranger,  or  a  traveller;  all  must  be  employed, 
every  one  according  to  his  worth,  for  all  help  to  make  up 
a  household;  yea,  the  folly  and  the  simplicity  of  others 
shall  be  as  instructions  to  him.  By  controlling  the  graces 
and  manners  of  others,  he  shall  acquire  unto  himself  envy 
of  the  good  and  contempt  of  the  bad.  Let  him  hardly 
be  possessed  with  an  honest  curiosity  to  search  out  the 
nature  and  causes  of  all  things;  let  him  survey  whatso- 
ever is  rare  and  singular  about  him;  a  building,  a  foun- 
tain, a  man,  a  place  where  any  battle  hath  been  fought, 
or  the  passages  of  Caesar  or  Charlemagne: 

Quae  tellus  sit  lenta  gelu,  quae  putris  ab^aestu, 
Ventus  in  Italiam  quis  bene  vela  ferat. 
"  What  land  is  parched  with  heat,  what  clogged  with  frost, 
What  wind  drives  kindly  to  th'  Italian  coast. 


18  MONTAIGNE 

He  shall  endeavour  to  be  familiarly  acquainted  with 
the  customs,  with  the  means,  with  the  state,  with  the  de- 
pendencies and  alliances  of  all  princes;  they  are  things 
soon  and  pleasant  to  be  learned,  and  most  profitable  to 
be  known.  In  this  acquaintance  of  men  my  intending  is 
that  he  chiefly  comprehend  them  that  live  but  by  the 
memory  of  books.  He  shall,  by  the  help  of  histories,  in- 
form himself  of  the  worthiest  minds  that  were  in  the  best 
ages.  It  is  a  frivolous  study,  if  a  man  list,  but  of  invalu- 
able worth  to  such  as  can  make  use  of  it,  and,  as  Plato 
saith,  the  only  study  the  Lacedaemonians  reserved  for 
themselves.  What  profit  shall  he  not  reap,  touching  this 
point,  reading  the  lives  of  our  Plutarch?  Always  condi- 
tioned, the  master  bethinketh  himself  whereto  his  charge 
tendeth,  and  that  he  imprint  not  so  much  in  his  scholar's 
mind  the  date  of  the  ruin  of  Carthage,  as  the  manners 
of  Hannibal  and  Scipio,  nor  so  much  where  Marcellus  died, 
as  because  he  was  unworthy  of  his  devoir  he  died  there; 
that  he  teach  him  not  so  much  to  know  histories  as  to 
judge  of  them.  It  is  among  things  that  best  agree  with 
my  humour,  the  subject  to  which  our  spirits  do  most 
diversely  apply  themselves.  I  have  read  in  Titus  Livius 
a  number  of  things,  which  peradventure  others  never  read, 
in  whom  Plutarch  haply  read  a  hundred  more  than  ever 
I  could  read,  and  which  perhaps  the  author  himself  did 
never  intend  to  set  down.  To  some  kind  of  men  it  is  a 
mere  grammatical  study,  but  to  others  a  perfect  anatomy 
of  philosophy;  by  means  whereof  the  secretest  part  of  our 
nature  is  searched  into.  There  are  in  Plutarch  many 
ample  discourses  most  worthy  to  be  known;  for  in  my 
judgment  he  is  the  chief  work-master  of  such  works, 
whereof  there  are  a  thousand,  whereat  he  hath  but  slightly 
glanced;  for  with  his  finger  he  doth  but  point  us  out  a 
way  to  walk  in  if  we  list;  and  is  sometimes  pleased  to 
give  but  a  touch  at  the  quickest  and  main  point  of  a  dis- 
course, from  whence  they  are  by  diligent  study  to  be  drawn, 
and  so  brought  into  open  market.  As  that  saying  of  his, 
That  the  inhabitants  of  Asia  served  but  one  alone,  be- 
cause they  could  not  pronounce  one  only  syllable,  which 
is  Non,  gave  perhaps  both  subject  and  occasion  to  my 
friend  Boetie  to  compose  his  book  of  voluntary  servitude. 


EDUCATION   OF    CHILDREN  19 

If  it  were  no  more  but  to  see  Plutarch  wrest  a  slight  action 
to  man's  life,  or  a  word  that  seemeth  to  bear  no  such  sense, 
it  will  serve  for  a  whole  discourse.  It  is  pity  men  of  un- 
derstanding should  so  much  love  brevity;  without  doubt 
their  reputation  is  thereby  better,  but  we  the  worse.  Plu- 
tarch had  rather  we  should  commend  him  for  his  judgment 
than  for  his  knowledge;  he  loveth  better  to  leave  a  kind 
of  longing  desire  in  us  of  him  than  a  satiety.  He  knew 
very  well  that  even  in  good  things  too  much  may  be  said; 
and  that  Alexandridas  did  justly  reprove  him  who  spake 
very  good  sentences  to  the  Ephores,  but  they  were  over- 
tedious.  "  Oh,  stranger,"  quoth  he,  "  thou  speakest  what 
thou  oughtest,  otherwise  than  thou  shouldest."  Those 
that  have  lean  and  thin  bodies  stuff  them  up  with  bom- 
basting.  And  such  as  have  but  poor  matter  will  puff  it 
up  with  lofty  words.  There  is  a  marvellous  clearness,  or, 
as  I  may  term  it,  an  enlightening  of  man's  judgment  drawn 
from  the  commerce  of  men,  and  by  frequenting  abroad  in 
the  world;  we  are  all  so  contrived  and  compact  in  our- 
selves that  our  sight  is  made  shorter  by  the  length  of  our 
nose.  When  Socrates  was  demanded  whence  he  was,  he 
answered,  Not  of  Athens,  but  of  the  world;  for  he,  who 
had  his  imagination  more  full  and  further  stretching,  em- 
braced all  the  world  for  his  native  city,  and  extended  his 
acquaintance,  his  society,  and  affections  to  all  mankind; 
and  not  as  we  do,  that  look  no  farther  than  our  feet.  If 
the  frost  chance  to  nip  the  vines  about  my  village,  my 
priest  doth  presently  argue  that  the  wrath  of  God  hangs 
over  our  head,  and  threateneth  all  mankind;  and  judgeth 
that  the  pip  is  already  fallen  upon  the  cannibals. 

In  viewing  these  intestine  and  civil  broils  of  ours,  who 
doth  not  exclaim  that  this  world's  vast  frame  is  near  unto 
a  dissolution,  and  that  the  day  of  judgment  is  ready  to  fall 
on  us?  never  remembering  that  many  worse  revolutions 
have  been  seen,  and  that  while  we  are  plunged  in  grief 
and  overwhelmed  in  sorrow  a  thousand  other  parts  of  the 
world  besides  are  blessed  with  happiness,  and  wallow  in 
pleasures,  and  never  think  on  us;  whereas,  when  I  behold 
our  lives,  our  license,  and  impunity,  I  wonder  to  see  them 
so  mild  and  easy.  He  on  whose  head  it  haileth  thinks  all 
the  hemisphere  besides  to  be  in  a  storm  and  tempest.  And 


20  MONTAIGNE 

as  that  dull-pated  Savoyard  said,  that  if  the  silly  King  of 
France  could  cunningly  have  managed  his  fortune,  he 
might  very  well  have  made  himself  chief  steward  of  his 
lord's  household,  whose  imagination  conceived  no  other 
greatness  than  his  master's;  we  are  all  insensible  of  this 
kind  of  error,  an  error  of  great  consequence  and  prejudice. 
But  whosoever  shall  present  unto  his  inward  eyes,  as  it 
were  in  a  table,  the  idea  of  the  great  image  of  our  universal 
mother  Nature,  attired  in  her  richest  robes,  sitting  in  the 
throne  of  her  majesty,  and  in  her  visage  shall  read  so  gen- 
eral and  so  constant  a  variety;  he  that  therein  shall  view 
himself,  not  himself  alone,  but  a  whole  kingdom,  to  be 
in  respect  of  a  great  circle  but  the  smallest  point  that  can 
be  imagined,  he  only  can  value  things  according  to  their 
essential  greatness  and  proportion.  This  great  universe 
(which  some  multiply  as  species  under  one  genus)  is  the 
true  looking-glass  wherein  we  must  look  if  we  will  know 
whether  we  be  of  a  good  stamp  or  in  the  right  bias.  To 
conclude,  I  would  have  this  world's  frame  to  be  my  schol- 
ar's choice  book.  So  many  strange  humours,  sundry  sects, 
varying  judgments,  divers  opinions,  different  laws,  and 
fantastical  customs  teach  us  to  judge  rightly  of  ours,  and 
instruct  our  judgment  to  acknowledge  his  imperfections 
and  natural  weakness,  which  is  no  easy  an  apprenticeship. 
So  many  innovations  of  estates,  so  many  falls  of  princes 
and  changes  of  public  fortune,  may  and  ought  to  teach 
us  not  to  make  so  great  account  of  ours.  So  many  names, 
so  many  victories,  and  so  many  conquests  buried  in  dark 
oblivion,  makes  the  hope  to  perpetuate  our  names  but 
ridiculous,  by  the  surprising  of  ten  Argo-letters,  or  of  a 
small  cottage,  which  is  known  but  by  his  fall.  The  pride 
and  fierceness  of  so  many  strange  and  gorgeous  shows; 
the  pride-puffed  majesty  of  so  many  courts,  and  of  their 
greatness,  ought  to  confirm  and  assure  our  sight,  undaunt- 
edly to  bear  the  affronts  and  thunder-claps  of  ours,  with- 
out feeling  our  eyes.  So  many  thousands  of  men,  low- 
laid  in  their  graves  before  us,  may  encourage  us  not  to 
fear,  or  be  dismayed  to  go  meet  so  good  company  in  the 
other  world;  and  so  of  all  things  else.  Our  life  (said  Py- 
thagoras) draws  near  unto  the  great  and  populous  assem- 
blies of  the  Olympic  games,  wherein  some,  to  get  the 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN  21 

glory  and  to  win  the  goal  of  the  games,  exercise  their 
bodies  with  all  industry;  others,  for  greediness  of  gain, 
bring  thither  merchandise  to  sell;  others  there  are  (and 
those  be  not  the  worst)  that  seek  after  no  other  good,  but 
to  mark  how,  wherefore,  and  to  what  end,  all  things  are 
done;  and  to  be  spectators  or  observers  of  other  men's 
lives  and  actions,  that  so  they  may  the  better  judge  and 
direct  their  own.  Unto  examples  may  all  the  most  profit- 
able discourses  of  philosophy  be  sorted,  which  ought  to 
be  the  touchstone  of  human  actions,  and  a  rule  to  square 
them  by,  to  whom  may  be  said: 

quid  fas  optare,  quid  asper 

Utile  nummus  habet,  patriae  charisque  propinquis 
Quantum  elargiri  deceat,  quern  te  Deus  esse 
lussit,  et  humana  qua  parte  locatus  es  in  re.10 
Quid  sumus,  aut  quidnam  victuri  gignimur.11 
"  What  thou  may'st  wish,  what  profit  may  come  clear, 
From  new-stamped  coin,  to  friends  and  country  dear 
What  thou  ought'st  give:  whom  God  would  have  thee  be, 
And  in  what  part  among  men  he  placed  thee, 
What  we  are,  and  wherefore, 
To  live  here  we  were  born." 

What  it  is  to  know,  and  not  to  know  (which  ought  to 
be  the  scope  of  study),  what  valour,  what  temperance,  and 
what  justice  is:  what  difference  there  is  between  ambition 
and  avarice,  bondage  and  freedom,  subjection  and  liberty, 
by  which  marks  a  man  may  distinguish  true  and  perfect 
contentment,  and  how  far  forth  one  ought  to  fear  or  ap- 
prehend death,  grief,  or  shame: 

Et  quo  quemque  modo  fugiatque  feratque  laborem." 
"  How  ev'ry  labour  he  may  ply, 
And  bear,  or  ev'ry  labour  fly." 

What  wards  or  springs  move  us,  and  the  causes  of 
so  many  motions  in  us.  For  meseemeth  that  the  first  dis- 
courses wherewith  his  conceit  should  be  sprinkled,  ought 
to  be  those  that  rule  his  manners  and  direct  his  sense; 
which  will  both  teach  him  to  know  himself,  and  how  to 
live  and  how  to  die  well.  Among  the  liberal  sciences,  let 
us  begin  with  that  which  makes  us  free.  Indeed,  they 
may  all  in  some  sort  stead  us,  as  an  instruction  to  our  life, 
and  use  of  it,  as  all  other  things  else  serve  the  same  to 
some  purpose  or  other.  But  let  us  make  especial  choice  of 


22  MONTAIGNE 

that  which  may  directly  and  pertinently  serve  the  same. 
If  we  could  restrain  and  adapt  the  appurtenances  of  our 
life  to  their  right  bias  and  natural  limits,  we  should  find 
the  best  part  of  the  sciences  that  now  are  in  use,  clean  out 
of  fashion  with  us;  yea,  and  in  those  that  are  most  in  use, 
there*  are  certain  by-ways  and  deep-flows  most  profitable, 
which  we  should  do  well  to  leave,  and,  according  to  the 
institution  of  Socrates,  limit  the  course  of  our  studies  in 
those  where  profit  is  wanting: 

-sapere  aude, 


Incipe:  vivendi  qui  recte  prorogat  horam, 
Rusticus  expectat  dum  defluat  amnis,  at  ille, 
Labitur,  et  labetur  in  omne  volubilis  aevum." 
"  Be  bold  to  be  wise:  to  begin,  be  strong, 
He  that  to  live  well  doth  the  time  prolong, 
Clown-like  expects,  till  down  the  stream  be  run, 
That  runs,  and  will  run,  till  the  world  be  done." 

It  is  mere  simplicity  to  teach  our  children, 

Quid  moveant  Pisces,  animosaque  signa  Leonis, 
Lotus  et  Hesperia  quid  Capricornus  aqua.14 
"  What  Pisces  move,  or  hot  breath'd  Leos  beams, 
Or  Capricornus  bathed  in  western  streams," 

the  knowledge  of  the  stars,  and  the  motion  of  the  eighth 
sphere,  before  their  own: 


Ti  n\tid$«T<Ti  K0.fj.ol          rl  8*  affrpdcri 

"  What  longs  it  to  the  seven  stars,  and  me, 
Or  those  about  Bootes  be." 

Anaximenes,  writing  to  Pythagoras,  saith,  "  With  what 
sense  can  I  amuse  myself  in  the  secrets  of  the  stars,  hav- 
ing continually  death  or  bondage  before  mine  eyes?  "  For 
at  that  time  the  Kings  of  Persia  were  making  preparations 
to  war  against  his  country.  All  men  ought  to  say  so. 
Being  beaten  with  ambition,  with  avarice,  with  rashness, 
and  with  superstition,  and  having  such  other  enemies  unto 
life  within  him.  Wherefore  shall  I  study  and  take  care 
about  the  mobility  and  variation  of  the  world?  When  he 
is  once  taught  what  is  fit  to  make  him  better  and  wiser, 
he  shall  be  entertained  with  logic,  natural  philosophy, 
geometry,  and  rhetoric,  then  having  settled  his  judgment, 
look  what  science  he  doth  most  addict  himself  unto,  he 
shall  in  short  time  attain  to  the  perfection  of  it.  His  lee- 


EDUCATION   OF  CHILDREN  33 

ture  shall  be  sometimes  by  way  of  talk  and  sometimes  by 
book;  his  tutor  may  now  and  then  supply  him  with  the 
same  author,  as  an  end  and  motive  of  his  institution;  some- 
times giving  him  the  pith  and  substance  of  it  ready  chewed. 
And  if  of  himself  he  be  not  so  thoroughly  acquainted  with 
books  that  he  may  readily  find  so  many  notable  discourses 
as  are  in  them  to  effect  his  purpose,  it  shall  not  be  amiss 
that  some  learned  man  be  appointed  to  keep  him  company, 
who  at  any  time  of  need  may  furnish  him  with  such  muni- 
tion as  he  shall  stand  in  need  of;  that  he  may  afterward 
distribute  and  dispense  them  to  his  best  use.  And  that 
this  kind  of  lesson  be  more  easy  and  natural  than  that  of 
Gaza,  who  will  make  question?  Those  are  but  harsh, 
thorny,  and  unpleasant  precepts;  vain,  idle,  and  immaterial 
words,  on  which  small  hold  may  be  taken;  wherein  is  noth- 
ing to  quicken  the  mind.  In  this  the  spirit  findeth  sub- 
stance to  bide  and  feed  upon.  A  fruit  without  all  com- 
parison much  better,  and  that  will  soon  be  ripe.  It  is  a 
thing  worthy  consideration  to  see  what  state  things  are 
brought  unto  in  this  our  age;  and  how  philosophy,  even 
to  the  wisest,  and  men  of  best  understanding,  is  but  an  idle, 
vain,  and  fantastical  name,  of  small  use  and  less  worth, 
both  in  opinion  and  effect.  I  think  these  sophistries  are 
the  cause  of  it,  which  have  forestalled  the  ways  to  come 
unto  it.  They  do  very  ill  that  go  about  to  make  it  seem 
as  it  were  inaccessible  for  children  to  come  unto,  setting 
it  forth  with  a  wrinkled,  ghastly,  and  frowning  visage;  who 
hath  masked  her  with  so  counterfeit,  pale,  and  hideous  a 
countenance?  There  is  nothing  more  beauteous,  nothing 
more  delightful,  nothing  more  gamesome;  and,  as  I  may 
say,  nothing  more  fondly  wanton:  for  she  presenteth  noth- 
ing to  our  eyes,  and  preacheth  nothing  to  our  ears,  but 
sport  and  pastime.  A  sad  and  lowering  look  plainly  de- 
clareth  that  that  is  not  her  haunt.  Demetrius  the  gram- 
marian, finding  a  company  of  philosophers  sitting  close 
together  in  the  Temple  of  Delphos,  said  unto  them,  "Either 
I  am  deceived  or  by  your  plausible  and  pleasant  looks  you 
are  not  in  any  serious  and  earnest  discourse  among  your- 
selves ";  to  whom  one  of  them,  named  Heracleon  the  Me- 
garian,  answered:  "  That  belongeth  to  them  who  busy 
themselves  in  seeking  whether  the  future  tense  of  the  verb 


24  MONTAIGNE 

pd\\cd  hath  a  double  \,  or  that  labour  to  find  the  derivation 
of  the  comparatives  x€iPov>  Pe\riov,  and  of  the  superlatives 
Xeipio-Tov,  /3e\rurrov,  it  is  they  that  must  chafe  in  entertain- 
ing themselves  with  their  science:  as  for  discourses  of  phi- 
losophy they  are  wont  to  glad,  rejoice,  and  not  to  vex  and 
molest  those  that  use  them  ": 

Deprendas  animi  tormenta  latentis  in  aegro 
Corpore,  deprendas  et  gaudia;  sumit  utrumque 
Inde  habitum  facies.1* 

"  You  may  perceive  the  torments  of  the  mind, 
Hid  in  sick  body,  you  the  joys  may  find; 
The  face  such  habit  takes  in  either  kind." 

That  mind  which  harboureth  philosophy  ought  by  rea- 
son of  her  sound  health  make  that  body  also  sound  and 
healthy;  it  ought  to  make  her  contentment  to  through- 
shine  in  all  exterior  parts;  it  ought  to  shapen  and  model 
all  outward  demeanours  to  the  model  of  it;  and  by  conse- 
quence arm  him  that  doth  possess  it  with  a  gracious  stout- 
ness and  lively  audacity,  with  an  active  and  pleasing  ges- 
ture, and  with  a  settled  and  cheerful  countenance.  The 
most  evident  token  and  apparent  sign  of  true  wisdom  is 
a  constant  and  unconstrained  rejoicing,  whose  estate  is 
like  unto  all  things  above  the  moon,  that  is  ever  clear, 
always  bright.  It  is  Baroco  and  Baralipton  that  makes 
their  followers  prove  so  base  and  idle,  and  not  philosophy; 
they  know  her  not  but  by  hearsay:  what?  Is  it  not  she 
that  cleareth  all  storms  of  the  mind?  And  teacheth  mis- 
ery, famine,  and  sickness  to  laugh?  Not  by  reason  of  some 
imaginary  epicycles,  but  by  natural  and  palpable  reasons. 
She  aimeth  at  nothing  but  virtue;  it  is  virtue  she  seeks 
after;  which,  as  the  school  saith,  is  not  pitched  on  the  top 
of  a  high,  steepy,  or  inaccessible  hill;  for  they  that  have 
come  unto  her  affirm  that  clean  contrary  she  keeps  her 
stand,  and  holds  her  mansion  in  a  fair,  flourishing,  and 
pleasant  plain,  whence,  as  from  a  high  watch  tower,  she 
surveyeth  all  things,  to  be  subject  unto  her,  to  whom  any 
man  may  with  great  facility  come  if  he  but  know  the  way 
or  entrance  to  her  palace;  for  the  paths  that  lead  unto  her 
are  certain  fresh  and  shady  green  allies,  sweet  and  flowery 
ways,  whose  ascent  is  even,  easy,  and  nothing  wearisome, 
like  unto  that  of  heaven's  vaults.  Forsomuch  as  they  have 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN  2$ 

not  frequented  this  virtue,  who  gloriously,  as  in  a  throne 
of  majesty  sits  sovereign,  goodly,  triumphant,  lovely, 
equally  delicious  and  courageous,  protesting  herself  to  be 
a  professed  and  irreconcilable  enemy  to  all  sharpness,  au- 
sterity, fear,  and  compulsion;  having  Nature  for  her  guide, 
fortune  and  voluptuousness  for  her  companions;  they  ac- 
cording to  their  weakness  have  imaginarily  fained  her  to 
have  a  foolish,  sad,  grim,  quarrelous,  spiteful,  threatening, 
and  disdainful  visage,  with  a  horrid  and  unpleasant  look; 
and  have  placed  her  upon  a  craggy,  sharp,  and  unfrequented 
rock,  amid  desert  cliffs  and  uncouth  crags,  as  a  scarecrow, 
or  bugbear,  to  affright  the  common  people  with.  Now 
the  tutor,  which  ought  to  know  that  he  should  rather  seek 
to  fill  the  mind  and  store  the  will  of  his  disciple,  as  much, 
or  rather  more,  with  love  and  affection,  than  with  awe, 
and  reverence  unto  virtue,  may  show  and  tell  him  that 
poets  follow  common  humours,  making  him  plainly  to 
perceive,  and  as  it  were  palpably  to  feel,  that  the  gods  have 
rather  placed  labour  and  sweat  at  the  entrances  which  lead 
to  Venus's  chambers  than  at  the  doors  that  direct  to  Pal- 
las's  cabinets. 

And  when  he  shall  perceive  his  scholar  to  have  a  sen- 
sible feeling  of  himself,  presenting  Bradamant  or  Angelica 
before  him,  as  a  mistress  to  enjoy,  embellished  with  a  nat- 
ural, active,  generous,  and  unspotted  beauty  not  ugly  or 
giant-like,  but  blithe  and  lively,  in  respect  of  a  wanton,  soft, 
affected,  and  artificial  flaring  beauty;  the  one  attired  like 
unto  a  young  man,  coifed  with  a  bright  shining  helmet, 
the  other  disguised  and  dressed  about  the  head  like  unto 
an  impudent  harlot,  with  embroideries,  frizzlings,  and  car- 
canets  of  pearls:  he  will  no  doubt  deem  his  own  love  to 
be  a  man  and  no  woman,  if  in  his  choice  he  differ  from 
that  effeminate  shepherd  of  Phrygia.  In  this  new  kind  of 
lesson  he  shall  declare  unto  him  that  the  prize,  the  glory, 
and  height  of  true  virtue  consisted  in  the  facility,  profit, 
and  pleasure  of  his  exercises;  so  far  from  difficulty  and  in- 
cumbrances  that  children  as  well  as  men,  the  simple  as 
soon  as  the  wise,  may  come  unto  her.  Discretion  and  tem- 
perance, not  force  or  waywardness,  are  the  instruments  to 
bring  him  unto  her.  Socrates  (virtue's  chief  favourite), 
that  he  might  the  better  walk  in  the  pleasant,  natural,  and 


26  MONTAIGNE 

open  path  of  her  progresses,  doth  voluntarily  and  in  good 
earnest  quit  all  compulsion.  She  is  the  nurse  and  foster- 
mother  of  all  human  pleasures,  who  in  making  them  just 
and  upright  she  also  makes  them  sure  and  sincere.  By 
moderating  them  she  keepeth  them  in  ure  and  breath.  In 
limiting  and  cutting  them  off  whom  she  refuseth  she  whets 
us  on  toward  those  she  leaveth  unto  us;  and  plenteously 
leaves  us  them  which  Nature  pleaseth,  and  like  a  kind 
mother  giveth  us  over  unto  satiety,  if  not  unto  wearisome- 
ness,  unless  we  will  peradventure  say  that  the  rule  and 
bridle  which  stayeth  the  drunkard  before  drunkenness,  the 
glutton  before  surfeiting,  and  the  letcher  before  the  losing 
of  his  hair,  be  the  enemies  of  our  pleasures.  If  common 
fortune  fail  her,  it  clearly  scapes  her;  or  she  cares  not  for 
her,  or  she  frames  another  unto  herself,  altogether  her  own, 
not  so  fleeting  nor  so  rowling.  She  knoweth  the  way  how 
to  be  rich,  mighty,  and  wise,  and  how  to  lie  in  sweet- 
perfumed  beds.  She  loveth  life;  she  delights  in  beauty, 
in  glory,  and  in  health.  But  her  proper  and  particular 
office  is,  first  to  know  how  to  use  such  goods  temperately, 
and  how  to  lose  them  constantly.  An  office  much  more 
noble  than  severe,  without  which  all  course  of  life  is  un- 
natural, turbulent,  and  deformed,  to  which  one  may  law- 
fully join  those  rocks,  those  incumbrances,  and  hideous 
monsters.  If  so  it  happen  that  his  disciple  prove  of  so  dif- 
ferent a  condition,  that  he  rather  love  to  give  ear  to  an 
idle  fable  than  to  the  report  of  some  noble  voyage,  or  other 
notable  and  wise  discourse,  when  he  shall  hear  it;  that  at 
the  sound  of  a  drum  or  clang  of  a  trumpet,  which  are  wont 
to  rouse  and  arm  the  youthly  heat  of  his  companions,  turn- 
eth  to  another  that  calleth  him  to  see  a  play,  tumbling,  jug- 
gling tricks,  or  other  idle  lose-time  sports;  and  who  for 
pleasure's  sake  doth  not  deem  it  more  delightsome  to  re- 
turn all  sweaty  and  weary  from  a  victorious  combat,  from 
wrestling,  or  riding  of  a  horse,  than  from  a  tennis-court  or 
dancing-school,  with  the  prize  or  honour  of  such  exercises. 
The  best  remedy  I  know  for  such  a  one  is,  to  put  him  pren- 
tice to  some  base  occupation,  in  some  good  town  or  other, 
yea,  were  he  the  son  of  a  duke;  according  to  Plato's  rule, 
who  saith,  "  That  children  must  be  placed  not  according  to 
their  father's  conditions,  but  the  faculties  of  their  mind." 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN  2/ 

Since  it  is  Philosophy  that  teacheth  us  to  live,  and  that 
infancy,  as  well  as  other  ages,  may  plainly  read  her  lessons 
in  the  same,  why  should  it  not  be  imparted  unto  young 
scholars? 

Udum  et  molle  lutum  est,  nunc  nunc  properandus,  et  acri 
Fingendus  sine  fine  rota." 

"  He's  moist  and  soft  mould,  and  must  by-and-by 
Be  cast,  made  up,  while  wheel  whirls  readily." 

We  are  taught  to  live  when  our  life  is  well-nigh  spent. 
Many  scholars  have  been  infected  with  that  loathsome  and 
marrow-wasting  disease  before  ever  they  came  to  read 
Aristotle's  treatise  of  "  Temperance."  Cicero  was  wont  to 
say,  "  That  could  he  outlive  the  lives  of  two  men,  he 
should  never  find  leisure  to  study  the  lyric  poets."  And  I 
find  these  sophisters  both  worse  and  more  unprofitable. 
Our  child  is  engaged  in  greater  matters,  and  but  the  first 
fifteen  or  sixteen  years  of  his  life  are  due  unto  pedantism, 
the  rest  unto  action;  let  us  therefore  employ  so  short  time 
as  we  have  to  live  in  more  necessary  instructions.  It  is  an 
abuse;  remove  these  thorny  quiddities  of  logic,  whereby 
our  life  can  no  whit  be  amended,  and  betake  ourselves  to 
the  simple  discourses  of  philosophy;  know  how  to  choose 
and  fitly  to  make  use  of  them:  they  are  much  more  easy 
to  be  conceived  than  one  of  Boccaccio's  tales.  A  child 
coming  from  nurse  is  more  capable  of  them  than  he  is  to 
learn  to  read  or  write.  Philosophy  hath  discourses,  whereof 
infancy  as  well  as  decaying  old  age  may  make  good  use. 
I  am  of  Plutarch's  mind,  which  is,  that  Aristotle  did  not 
so  much  amuse  his  great  disciple  about  the  arts  how  to 
frame  syllogisms,  or  the  principles  of  geometry,  as  he  en- 
deavoured to  instruct  him  with  good  precepts  concerning 
valour,  prowess,  magnanimity,  and  temperance,  and  an  un- 
daunted assurance  not  to  fear  anything;  and  with  such 
munition  he  sent  him,  being  yet  very  young,  to  subdue  the 
empire  of  the  world,  only  with  thirty  thousand  footmen, 
four  thousand  horsemen,  and  forty-two  thousand  crowns 
in  money.  As  for  other  arts  and  sciences,  he  saith  Alex- 
ander honoured  them,  and  commended  their  excellency  and 
comeliness;  but  for  any  pleasure  he  took  in  them,  his  affec- 
tion could  not  easily  be  drawn  to  exercise  them: 


28  MONTAIGNE 

petite  hinc  juvenesque  senesque 

Finem  animo  certum,  miserisque  viatica  canis.11 

"  Young  men  and  old,  draw  hence  (in  your  affairs) 

Your  minds'  set  mark,  provision  for  gray  hairs." 

It  is  that  which  Epicurus  said  in  the  beginning  of  his 
letter  to  Memiceus:  "  Neither  let  the  youngest  shun  nor 
the  oldest  weary  himself  in  philosophizing,  for  who  doth 
otherwise  seemeth  to  say,  that  either  the  season  to  live 
happily  is  not  yet  come,  or  is  already  past."  Yet  would  I 
not  have  this  young  gentleman  pent  up,  nor  carelessly  cast 
off  to  the  heedless  choler,  or  melancholy  humour  of  the 
hasty  schoolmaster.  I  would  not  have  his  budding  spirit 
corrupted  with  keeping  him  fast  tied,  and,  as  it  were,  la- 
bouring fourteen  or  fifteen  hours  a  day  poring  on  his  book, 
as  some  do,  as  if  he  were  a  day-labouring  man;  neither  do 
I  think  it  fit  if  at  any  time,  by  reason  of  some  solitary  or 
melancholy  complexion,  he  should  be  seen  with  an  over- 
indiscreet  application  given  to  his  book,  it  should  be  cher- 
ished in  him,  for  that  doth  often  make  him  both  inapt  for 
civil  conversation  and  distracts  him  from  better  employ- 
ments. How  many  have  I  seen  in  my  days,  by  an  over- 
greedy  desire  of  knowledge,  become  as  it  were  foolish? 
Carneades  was  so  deeply  plunged  and,  as  I  may  say,  be- 
sotted in  it,  that  he  could  never  have  leisure  to  cut  his  hair 
or  pare  his  nails;  nor  would  I  have  his  noble  manners  ob- 
scured by  the  incivility  and  barbarism  of  others.  The 
French  wisdom  hath  long  since  proverbially  been  spoken 
of  as  very  apt  to  conceive  study  in  her  youth,  but  most 
inapt  to  keep  it  long.  In  good  truth,  we  see  at  this  day 
that  there  is  nothing  lovelier  to  behold  than  the  young  chil- 
dren of  France;  but  for  the  most  part  they  deceive  the 
hope  which  was  fore-apprehended  of  them;  for  when  they 
once  become  men  there  is  no  excellency  at  all  in  them.  I 
have  heard  men  of  understanding  hold  this  opinion,  that 
the  colleges  to  which  they  are  sent  (of  which  there  are 
store)  do  thus  besot  them;  whereas  to  our  scholar,  a  cabi- 
net, a  garden,  the  table,  the  bed,  a  solitariness,  a  company, 
morning  and  evening,  and  all  hours  shall  be  alike  unto  him, 
all  places  shall  be  a  study  for  him;  for  philosophy  (as  a 
former  of  judgments  and  modeller  of  customs)  shall  be  his 
principal  lesson,  having  the  privilege  to  intermeddle  herself 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN 


29 


with  all  things  and  in  all  places.  Isocrates  the  orator,  being 
once  requested  at  a  great  banquet  to  speak  of  his  art,  when 
all  thought  he  had  reason  to  answer,  said:  "  It  is  not  now 
time  to  do  what  I  can,  and  what  should  now  be  done  I 
can  not  do  it;  for  to  present  orations,  or  to  enter  into  dis- 
putation of  rhetoric,  before  a  company  assembled  together 
to  be  merry,  and  make  good  cheer,  would  be  but  a  medley 
of  harsh  and  jarring  music."  The  like  may  be  said  of  all 
other  sciences.  But  touching  Philosophy — namely,  in  that 
point  where  it  treateth  of  man,  and  of  his  duties  and  offices 
— it  hath  been  the  common  judgment  of  the  wisest  that  in 
regard  of  the  pleasantness  of  her  conversation  she  ought 
not  to  be  rejected,  neither  at  banquets  nor  at  sports.  And 
Plato  having  invited  her  to  his  solemn  feast,  we  see  how 
kindly  she  entertaineth  the  company  with  a  mild  behaviour, 
fitly  suiting  herself  to  time  and  place,  notwithstanding  it 
be  one  of  his  most  learned  and  profitable  discourses. 

jEque  pauperibus  prodest,  locupletibus  aeque, 
Et  neglecta  aeque  pueris  senibusque  nocebit.19 
"  Poor  men  alike,  alike  rich  men  it  easeth, 
Alike  it,  scorned,  old  and  young  displeaseth." 

So  doubtless  he  shall  less  be  idle  than  others;  for  even 
as  the  paces  we  bestow  walking  in  a  gallery,  although  they 
be  twice  as  many  more,  weary  us  not  so  much  as  those  we 
spend  in  going  a  set  journey;  so  our  lesson  being  passed 
over,  as  it  were,  by  chance,  or  way  of  encounter,  without 
strict  observance  of  time  or  place,  being  applied  to  all  our 
actions,  shall  be  digested  and  never  felt.  All  sports  and 
exercises  shall  be  a  part  of  his  study;  running,  wrestling, 
music,  dancing,  hunting,  and  managing  of  arms  and  horses. 
I  would  have  the  exterior  demeanour  or  decency  and  the 
disposition  of  his  person  to  be  fashioned  together  with  his 
mind;  for  it  is  not  a  mind,  it  is  not  a  body  that  we  erect, 
but  it  is  a  man,  and  we  must  not  make  two  parts  of  him. 
And,  as  Plato  saith,  they  must  not  be  erected  one  without 
another,  but  equally  be  directed,  no  otherwise  than  a  couple 
of  horses  matched  to  draw  in  one  selfsame  team.  And  to 
hear  him,  doth  he  not  seem  to  employ  more  time  and  care 
in  the  exercises  of  his  body;  and  to  think  that  the  mind  is 
together  with  the  same  exercised,  and  not  the  contrary? 
As  for  other  matters,  this  institution  ought  to  be  directed 


30  MONTAIGNE 

by  a  sweet-severe  mildness.  Not  as  some  do,  who  in  lieu 
of  gently  bidding  children  to  the  banquet  of  letters,  pre- 
sent them  with  nothing  but  horror  and  cruelty.  Let  me 
have  this  violence  and  compulsion  removed,  there  is  noth- 
ing that,  in  my  seeming,  doth  more  bastardize  and  dizzy 
a  well-born  and  gentle  nature.  If  you  would  have  him 
stand  in  awe  of  shame  and  punishment,  do  not  so  much 
inure  him  to  it;  accustom  him  patiently  to  endure  sweat 
and  cold,  the  sharpness  of  the  wind,  the  heat  of  the  sun, 
and  how  to  despise  all  hazards.  Remove  from  him  all  nice- 
ness  and  quaintness  in  clothing,  in  lying,  in  eating,  and  in 
drinking;  fashion  him  to  all  things,  that  he  prove  not  a 
fair  and  wanton,  puling  boy,  but  a  lusty  and  vigorous  boy. 
When  I  was  a  child,  when  I  became  a  man,  and  now  when 
I  am  old,  I  have  ever  judged  and  believed  the  same.  But 
among  other  things  I  could  never  away  with  this  kind  of 
discipline  used  in  most  of  our  colleges.  It  had  peradven- 
ture  been  less  hurtful  if  they  had  somewhat  inclined  to  mild- 
ness or  gentle  entreaty.  It  is  a  very  prison  of  captivated 
youth,  and  proves  dissolute  in  punishing  it  before  it  be  so. 
Come  upon  them  when  they  are  going  to  their  lesson,  and 
you  hear  nothing  but  whipping  and  brawling,  both  of  chil- 
dren tormented  and  masters  besotted  with  anger  and  chafT 
ing.  How  wide  are  they  which  go  about  to  allure  a  child's 
mind  to  go  to  its  book,  being  yet  but  tender  and  fearful, 
with  a  stern,  frowning  countenance,  and  with  hands  full 
of  rods!  Oh,  wicked  and  pernicious  manner  of  teaching! 
which  Quintilian  hath  very  well  noted,  that  this  imperious 
kind  of  authority — namely,  this  way  of  punishing  of  chil- 
dren— draws  many  dangerous  inconveniences  within.  How 
much  more  decent  were  it  to  see  their  schoolhouses  and 
forms  strewed  with  green  boughs  and  flowers  than  with 
bloody  birchen  twigs!  If  it  lay  in  me  I  would  do  as  the 
philosopher  Speusippus  did,  who  caused  the  pictures  of 
Gladness  and  Joy,  of  Flora  and  of  the  Graces,  to  be  set 
up  round  about  his  schoolhouse.  Where  their  profit  lieth, 
there  should  also  be  their  recreation.  Those  meats  ought 
to  be  sugared  over  that  are  healthful  for  children's  stom- 
achs, and  those  made  bitter  that  are  hurtful  for  them.  It 
is  strange  to  see  how  careful  Plato  showeth  himself  in  fram- 
ing of  his  laws  about  the  recreation  and  pastime  of  the 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN  3! 

youth  of  his  city,  and  how  far  he  extends  himself  about 
their  exercises,  sports,  songs,  leaping,  and  dancing,  whereof 
he  saith  that  severe  antiquity  gave  the  conduct  and  patron- 
age unto  the  gods  themselves — namely,  to  Apollo,  to  the 
Muses,  and  to  Minerva.  Mark  but  how  far  forth  he  en- 
deavoureth  to  give  a  thousand  precepts  to  be  kept  in  his 
places  of  exercises  both  of  body  and  mind.  As  for  learned 
sciences,  he  stands  not  much  upon  them,  and  seemeth  in 
particular  to  commend  poesy  but  for  music's  sake.  All 
strangeness  and  self-particularity  in  our  manners  and  con- 
ditions is  to  be  shunned  as  an  enemy  to  society  and  civil 
conversation.  Who  would  not  be  astonished  at  Demo- 
phon's  complexion,  chief  steward  of  Alexander's  household, 
who  was  wont  to  sweat  in  the  shadow  and  quiver  for  cold 
in  the  sun?  I  have  seen  some  to  startle  at  the  smell  of  an 
apple  more  than  at  the  shot  of  a  piece;  some  to  be  frighted 
with  a  mouse,  some  ready  to  cast  their  gorge  at  the  sight 
of  a  mess  of  cream,  and  others  to  be  scared  with  seeing 
a  feather  bed  shaken;  as  Germanicus,  who  could  not  abide 
to  see  a  cock  or  hear  his  crowing.  There  may  haply  be 
some  hidden  property  of  Nature  which  in  my  judgment 
might  easily  be  removed  if  it  were  taken  in  time.  Institu- 
tion hath  gotten  this  upon  me  (I  must  confess  with  much 
ado),  for,  except  beer,  all  things  else  that  are  man's  food 
agree  indifferently  with  my  taste.  The  body  being  yet 
supple,  ought  to  be  accommodated  to  all  fashions  and  cus- 
toms; and  (always  provided  his  appetites  and  desires  be 
kept  under)  let  a  young  man  boldly  be  made  fit  for  all 
nations  and  companies,  yea,  if  need  be,  for  all  disorders 
and  surfeitings;  let  him  acquaint  himself  with  all  fashions, 
that  he  may  be  able  to  do  all  things,  and  love  to  do  none 
but  those  that  are  commendable.  Some  strict  philosophers 
commend  not,  but  rather  blame  Calisthenes  for  losing  the 
good  favour  of  his  master  Alexander,  only  because  he  would 
not  pledge  him  as  much  as  he  had  drunk  to  him.  He  shall 
laugh,  jest,  dally,  and  debauch  himself  with  his  prince. 
And  in  his  debauching  I  would  have  him  outgo  all  his 
fellows  in  vigour  and  constancy,  and  that  he  omit  not  to 
do  evil,  neither  for  want  of  strength  or  knowledge,  but 
for  lack  of  will.  Multum  interest  utrum  peccare  quis  nolit, 
aut  nesciat  20 — "  There  is  a  great  difference,  whether  one 


32  MONTAIGNE 

have  no  will  or  no  wit  to  do  amiss/'  I  thought  to  have 
honoured  a  gentleman  (as  great  a  stranger,  and  as  far 
from  such  riotous  disorders  as  any  is  in  France)  by  in- 
quiring of  him  in  very  good  company  how  many  times 
in  all  his  life  he  had  been  drunk  in  Germany  during  the 
time  of  his  abode  there,  about  the  necessary  affairs  of  our 
king;  who  took  it  even  as  I  meant  it,  and  answered  three 
times,  telling  the  time  and  manner  how.  I  know  some 
who  for  want  of  that  quality  have  been  much  perplexed 
when  they  have  had  occasion  to  converse  with  that  na- 
tion. I  have  often  noted  with  great  admiration  that  won- 
derful nature  of  Alcibiades,  to  see  how  easily  he  could  suit 
himself  to  so  divers  fashions  and  different  humours,  with- 
out prejudice  unto  his  health;  sometimes  exceeding  the 
sumptuousness  and  pomp  of  the  Persians,  and  now  and 
then  surpassing  the  austerity  and  frugality  of  the  Lacedae- 
monians; as  reformed  in  Sparta,  as  voluptuous  in  Ionia. 

Omnis  Aristippum  decuit  color,  et  status,  et  res.21 
"  All  colours,  states,  and  things  are  fit        , 
For  courtly  Aristippus's  wit." 

Such  a  one  would  I  frame  my  disciple: 

-quern  duplici  panno  patientia  velat, 


Mirabor,  vitae  via  si  conversa  decebit. 
"  Whom  patience  clothes  with  suits  of  double  kind, 
I  muse,  if  he  another  way  will  find." 

Personamque  feret  non  inconcinnus  utramque.22 
"  He  not  unfitly  may 
Both  parts  and  persons  play." 

Lo,  here  my  lessons,  wherein  he  that  acteth  them 
profiteth  more  than  he  that  but  knoweth  them,  whom  if 
you  see  you  hear,  and  if  you  hear  him  you  see  him.  God 
forbid,  saith  somebody  in  Plato,  that  to  philosophize  be  to 
learn  many  things,  and  to  exercise  the  arts.  Hanc  amplis- 
simam  omnium  artium  bene  vivendi  disciplinary  vita  magis 
quam  litteris  persequnti  sunt  23 — "  This  discipline  of  living 
well,  which  is  the  amplest  of  all  other  arts,  they  followed 
rather  in  their  lives  than  in  their  learning  or  writing."  Leo, 
Prince  of  the  Phliasians,  inquiring  of  Heraclides  Ponticus 
what  art  he  professed,  he  answered,  "  Sir,  I  profess  neither 
art  nor  science,  but  I  am  a  philosopher."  Some  reproved 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN  33 

Diogenes  that,  being  an  ignorant  man,  he  did  neverthe- 
less meddle  with  philosophy;  to  whom  he  replied,  "  So 
much  the  more  reason  have  I,  and  to  greater  purpose  do 
I  meddle  with  it."  Hegesias  prayed  him  upon  a  time  to 
read  some  book  unto  him.  '  You  are  a  merry  man,"  said 
he;  "  as  you  choose  natural  and  not  painted  right  and  not 
counterfeit  figs  to  eat,  why  do  you  not  likewise  choose  not 
the  painted  and  written,  but  the  true  and  natural  exer- 
cises? "  He  shall  not  so  much  repeat  as  act  his  lesson. 
In  his  actions  shall  he  make  repetition  of  the  same.  We 
must  observe  whether  there  be  wisdom  in  his  enterprises, 
integrity  in  his  demeanour,  modesty  in  his  gestures,  justice 
in  his  actions,  judgment  and  grace  in  his  speech,  courage 
in  his  sickness,  moderation  in  his  sports,  temperance  in 
his  pleasures,  order  in  the  government  of  his  house,  and 
indifference  in  his  taste,  whether  it  be  flesh,  fish,  wine,  or 
water,  or  whatsoever  he  feedeth  upon.  Qui  disciplinam 
suam  non  ostentationem  scientiae  sed  legem  vitae  putet: 
quique  obtemperet  ipse  sibi,  et  decretis  pareat  24 — "  Who 
thinks  his  learning  not  an  ostentation  of  knowledge,  but 
a  law  of  life,  and  himself  obeys  himself,  and  doth  what  is 
decreed." 

The  true  mirror  of  our  discourses  is  the  course  of  our 
lives.  Zeuxidamus  answered  one  that  demanded  of  him 
why  the  Lacedaemonians  did  not  draw  into  a  book  the 
ordinances  of  prowess,  that  so  their  young  men  might  read 
them.  "  It  is,"  saith  he,  "  because  they  would  rather  ac- 
custom them  to  deeds  and  actions  than  to  books  and  writ- 
ings." Compare  at  the  end  of  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  one 
of  these  collegial  Latinizers,  who  hath  employed  all  that 
while  only  in  learning  how  to  speak,  to  such  a  one  as  I 
mean.  The  world  is  nothing  but  babbling  and  words,  and 
I  never  saw  man  that  doth  not  rather  speak  more  than 
he  ought  than  less.  Notwithstanding  half  our  age  is  con- 
sumed that  way.  We  are  kept  four  or  five  years  learning 
to  understand  bare  words,  and  to  join  them  into  clauses, 
then  as  long  in  proportioning  a  great  body  extended  into 
four  or  five  parts;  and  five  more  at  least  ere  we  can  suc- 
cinctly know  how  to  mingle,  join,  and  interlace  them  hand- 
somely into  a  subtle  fashion  and  into  one  coherent  orb. 
Let  us  leave  it  to  those  whose  profession  is  to  do  nothing 


34  MONTAIGNE 

else.  Being  once  on  my  journey  to  Orleans,  it  was  my 
chance  to  meet  upon  that  plain  that  lieth  on  this  side  Clery 
with  two  masters  of  arts,  travelling  toward  Bordeaux, 
about  fifty  paces  one  from  another;  far  off  behind  them 
I  descried  a  troop  of  horsemen,  their  master  riding  fore- 
most, who  was  the  Earl  of  Rochefoucauld;  one  of  my  serv- 
ants inquiring  of  the  first  of  those  masters  of  arts  what  gen- 
tleman he  was  that  followed  him;  supposing  my  servant 
had  meant  his  fellow-scholar,  for  he  had  not  yet  seen  the 
earl's  train,  answered  pleasantly,  "  He  is  no  gentleman,  sir, 
but  a  grammarian,  and  I  am  a  logician."  Now  we  that 
contrariwise  seek  not  to  frame  a  grammarian,  nor  a  logician, 
but  a  complete  gentleman,  let  us  give  them  leave  to  mis- 
spend their  time;  we  have  elsewhere,  and  somewhat  else 
of  more  import  to  do.  So  that  our  disciple  be  well  and 
sufficiently  stored  with  matter;  words  will  follow  apace, 
and  if  they  will  not  follow  gently,  he  shall  hail  them  on 
perforce.  I  hear  some  excuse  themselves  that  they  can 
not  express  their  meaning,  and  make  a  semblance  that  their 
heads  are  so  full  stuffed  with  many  goodly  things,  but  for 
want  of  eloquence  they  can  neither  utter  nor  make  show 
of  them.  It  is  a  mere  foppery.  And  will  you  know  what, 
in  my  seeming,  the  cause  is?  They  are  shadows  and  chi- 
meras, proceeding  of  some  formless  conceptions,  which 
they  can  not  distinguish  or  resolve  within,  and  by  con- 
sequence are  not  able  to  produce  them  inasmuch  as  they 
understand  not  themselves;  and  if  you  but  mark  their  ear- 
nestness, and  how  they  stammer  and  labour  at  the  point 
of  their  delivery,  you  would  deem  that  what  they  go  withal 
is  but  a  conceiving,  and  therefore  nothing  near  down- 
lying;  and  that  they  do  but  lick  that  imperfect  and  shape- 
less lump  of  matter.  As  for  me,  I  am  of  opinion,  and  Socra- 
tes would  have  it  so,  that  he  who  had  a  clear  and  lively 
imagination  in  his  mind  may  easily  produce  and  utter  the 
same,  although  it  be  in  Bergamasc  or  Welsh,  and  if  he  be 
dumb,  by  signs  and  tokens. 

Verbaque  praevisam  rem  non  invita  sequentur." 
"  When  matter  we  foreknow, 
Words  voluntary  flow." 

As  one  said,  as  poetically  in  his  prose,  Cum  res  animum 
occupavere,  verba  ambiunt  26 — "  When  matter  hath  pos- 


EDUCATION  OF  CHILDREN  35 

sessed  their  minds,  they  hunt  after  words";  and  another: 
Ipsae  res  verba  rapiunt  27 — "  Things  themselves  will  catch 
and  carry  words."  He  knows  neither  ablative,  conjunctive, 
substantive,  nor  grammar,  no  more  doth  his  lackey,  nor 
any  oyster-wife  about  the  streets,  and  yet  if  you  have  a 
mind  to  it  he  will  entertain  you  your  fill,  and  peradventure 
stumble  as  little  and  as  seldom  against  the  rules  of  his 
tongue  as  the  best  Master  of  Arts  in  France.  He  hath 
no  skill  in  rhetoric,  nor  can  he  with  a  preface  forestall  and 
captivate  the  gentle  reader's  good-will;  nor  careth  he 
greatly  to  know  it.  In  good  sooth,  all  this  garish  paint- 
ing is  easily  defaced  by  the  lustre  of  an  inbred  and  simple 
truth;  for  these  dainties  and  quaint  devices  serve  but  to 
amuse  the  vulgar  sort,  unapt  and  incapable  to  taste  the 
most  solid  and  firm  meat;  as  Afer  very  plainly  declareth 
in  Cornelius  Tacitus.  The  ambassadors  of  Samos  being 
come  to  Cleomenes,  King  of  Sparta,  prepared  with  a  long 
prolix  oration  to  stir  him  up  to  war  against  the  tyrant  Po- 
licrates,  after  he  had  listened  a  good  while  upon  them,  his 
answer  was:  "  Touching  your  exordium  or  beginning  I 
have  forgotten  it;  the  middle  I  remember  not;  and  for 
your  conclusion  I  will  do  nothing  in  it."  A  fit  and  (to  my 
thinking)  a  very  good  answer;  and  the  orators  were  put 
to  such  a  shift  as  they  knew  not  what  to  reply.  And  what 
said  another?  The  Athenians,  from  out  two  of  their  cun- 
ning architects,  were  to  choose  one  to  erect  a  notable  great 
frame;  the  one  of  them  more  affected  and  self-presuming, 
presented  himself  before  them,  with  a  smooth  fore-pre- 
meditated discourse  about  the  subject  of  that  piece  of  work, 
and  thereby  drew  the  judgments  of  the  common  people 
unto  his  liking;  but  the  other  in  few  words  spake  thus, 
"  Lords  of  Athens,  what  this  man  hath  said  I  will  per- 
form." In  the  greatest  earnestness  of  Cicero's  eloquence 
many  were  drawn  into  a  kind  of  admiration;  but  Cato, 
jesting  at  it,  said,  "  Have  we  not  a  pleasant  consul?  "  A 
quick,  cunning  argument,  and  a  witty  saying,  whether  it 
go  before  or  come  after,  it  is  never  out  of  season.  If  it 
have  no  coherence  with  that  which  goeth  before,  nor  with 
what  cometh  after,  it  is  good  and  commendable  in  itself. 
I  am  none  of  those  that  think  a  good  rhyme  to  make  a 
good  poem;  let  him  hardly  (if  so  he  please)  make  a  short 


36  MONTAIGNE 

syllable  long,  it  is  no  great  matter;  if  the  invention  be 
rare  and  good,  and  his  wit  and  judgment  have  cunningly 
played  their  part.  I  will  say  to  such  a  one,  he  is  a  good 
poet  but  an  ill  versifier. 

Emunctae  naris,  durus  componere  versus.18 
"  A  man  whose  sense  could  finely  pierce, 
But  harsh  and  hard  to  make  a  verse." 

Let  a  man  (saith  Horace)  make  his  work  lose  all  seams, 
measures,  and  joints. 

Tempora  certa  modosque,  et  quod  prius,  ordine  verbum  est.29 

Posterius  facias,  praeppnens  ultima  primis: 
Invenias  etiam  disjecti  membra  Poetae.10 
"  Set  times  and  moods,  make  you  the  first  word  last, 
The  last  word  first,  as  if  they  were  new  cast: 
Yet  find  th'  unjointed  poet's  joints  stand  fast." 

He  shall  for  all  that  nothing  gainsay  himself,  every 
piece  will  make  a  good  show.  To  this  purpose  answered 
Menander  those  that  chid  him,  the  day  being  at  hand  in 
which  he  had  promised  a  comedy,  and  had  not  begun  the 
same.  "Tut-tut!"  said  he,  "it  is  already  finished;  there 
wanteth  nothing  but  to  add  the  verse  unto  it " ;  for,  hav- 
ing ranged  and  cast  the  plot  in  his  mind,  he  made  small 
account  of  feet,  of  measures,  or  cadences  of  verses,  which, 
indeed,  are  but  of  small  import  in  regard  of  the  rest.  Since 
great  Ronsard  and  learned  Bellay  have  raised  our  French 
poesy  unto  that  height  of  honour  where  it  now  is,  I  see 
not  one  of  these  petty  ballad-makers,  or  prentice  doggerel 
rhymers,  that  doth  not  bombast  his  labours  with  high-swell- 
ing and  heaven-disembowelling  words,  and  that  doth  not 
marshal  his  cadences  very  near  as  they  do.  Plus  sonat 
quam  valet 31 — "  The  sound  is  more  than  the  weight  or 
worth."  And  for  the  vulgar  sort  there  were  never  so  many 
poets  and  so  few  good;  but  as  it  hath  been  easy  for  them 
to  represent  their  rhymes,  so  come  they  far  short  in  imitat- 
ing the  rich  descriptions  of  the  one  and  rare  inventions  of 
the  other.  But  what  shall  he  do  if  he  be  urged  with  sophis- 
tical subtilties  about  a  syllogism?  A  gammon  of  bacon 
makes  a  man  drink,  drinking  quencheth  a  man's  thirst; 
ergo,  a  gammon  of  bacon  quencheth  a  man's  thirst.  Let 
him  mock  at  it,  it  is  more  witty  to  be  mocked  at  than  to 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN 


37 


be  answered.  Let  him  borrow  this  pleasant  counter-craft 
of  Aristippus,  "  Why  shall  I  unbind  that  which,  being 
bound,  doth  so  much  trouble  me? "  Some  one  proposed 
certain  logical  quiddities  against  Cleanthes,  to  whom  Chri- 
sippus  said,  "  Use  such  juggling  tricks  to  play  with  chil- 
dren, and  divert  not  the  serious  thoughts  of  an  aged  man 
to  such  idle  matters."  If  such  foolish  wiles,  Contorta  et 
aculeata  sophismata  23 — "  Intricate  and  stinged  sophisms," 
must  persuade  a  lie,  it  is  dangerous;  but  if  they  prove  void 
of  any  effect,  and  move  him  but  to  laughter,  I  see  not  why 
he  shall  beware  of  them.  Some  there  are  so  foolish  that 
will  go  a  quarter  of  a  mile  out  of  the  way  to  hunt  after 
a  quaint  new  word  if  they  once  get  in  chase:  Aut  qui  non 
verba  rebus  aptant,  sed  res  extrinsecus  arcessunt,  quibus 
verba  conveniant — "Or  such  as  fit  not  words  to  matter, 
but  fetch  matter  from  abroad,  whereto  words  be  fitted." 
And  another,  Qui  alicujus  verbi  decore  placentis,  vocentur 
ad  id  quod  non  proposuerant  scribere  33 — "  Who  are  al- 
lured by  the  grace  of  some  pleasing  word  to  write  what 
they  intended  not  to  write."  I  do  more  willingly  wind  up 
a  witty  notable  sentence,  that  so  I  may  sew  it  upon  me, 
than  unwind  my  thread  to  go  fetch  it.  Contrariwise,  it  is 
for  words  to  serve  and  wait  upon  the  matter,  and  not  for 
matter  to  attend  upon  words,  and  if  the  French  tongue 
can  not  reach  unto  it,  let  the  Gascony,  or  any  other.  I 
would  have  the  matters  to  surmount,  and  so  fill  the  im- 
agination of  him  that  hearkeneth,  that  he  have  no  remem- 
brance at  all  of  the  words.  It  is  a  natural,  simple,  and  un- 
affected speech  that  I  love,  so  written  as  it  is  spoken,  and 
such  upon  the  paper  as  it  is  in  the  mouth,  a  pithy,  sinewy, 
full,  strong,  compendious  and  material  speech,  not  so  deli- 
cate and  affected  as  vehement  and  piercing. 

Haec  demum  sapiet  dictio  quae  feriet.84 
"  In  fine,  that  word  is  wisely  fit 
Which  strikes  the  fence,  the  mark  doth  hit." 

Rather  difficult  than  tedious,  void  of  affection,  free, 
loose,  and  bold,  that  every  member  of  it  seems  to  make  a 
body;  not  pedantical,  nor  friar-like,  nor  lawyer-like,  but 
rather  downright,  soldier-like.  As  Suetonius  calleth  that 
of  Julius  Caesar,  which  I  see  no  reason  wherefore  he  call- 

3 


38  MONTAIGNE 

eth  it.  I  have  sometimes  pleased  myself  in  imitating  that 
licentiousness  or  wanton  humour  of  our  youths,  in  wearing 
of  their  garments;  as  carelessly  to  let  their  cloaks  hang 
down  over  one  shoulder;  to  wear  their  cloaks  scarf  or 
bawdrikwise,  and  their  stockings  loose  hanging  about  their 
legs.  It  represents  a  kind  of  disdainful  fierceness  of  these 
foreign  embellishments,  and  neglect  carelessness  of  art. 
But  I  commend  it  more  being  employed  in  the  course  and 
form  of  speech.  All  manner  of  affectation,  namely,  in  the 
liveliness  and  liberty  of  France,  is  unseemly  in  a  courtier. 
And  in  a  monarchy  every  gentleman  ought  to  address 
himself  unto  a  courtier's  carriage.  Therefore  do  we  well 
somewhat  to  incline  to  a  native  and  careless  behaviour. 
I  like  not  a  contexture  where  the  seams  and  pieces  may 
be  seen.  As  in  a  well-compact  body,  what  need  a  man  dis- 
tinguish and  number  all  the  bones  and  veins  severally? 
Quae  veritati  operam  dat  oratio,  incomposita  sit  et  sim- 
plex.35 Quis  accurate  loquitur  nisi  qui  vult  putide  loqui?  36 
"  The  speech  that  intendeth  truth  must  be  plain  and  un- 
polished: who  speaketh  elaborately  but  he  that  means  to 
speak  unfavourably? "  That  eloquence  offereth  injury 
unto  things  which  altogether  draws  us  to  observe  it.  As 
in  apparel  it  is  a  sign  of  pusillanimity  for  one  to  mark 
himself  in  some  particular  and  unusual  fashion,  so  likewise 
in  common  speech  for  one  to  hunt  after  new  phrases  and 
unaccustomed  quaint  words  proceedeth  from  a  scholastical 
and  childish  ambition.  Let  me  use  none  other  than  are 
spoken  in  the  halls  of  Paris.  Aristophanes  the  grammarian 
was  somewhat  out  of  the  way  when  he  reproved  Epicurus 
for  the  simplicity  of  his  words,  and  the  end  of  his  art  ora- 
tory which  was  only  perspicuity  in  speech.  The  imitation 
of  speech,  by  reason  of  the  facility  of  it,  followeth  presently 
a  whole  nation.  The  imitation  of  judging  and  inventing, 
comes  more  slow.  The  greater  number  of  readers,  because 
they  have  found  one  selfsame  kind  of  gown,  suppose  most 
falsely  to  hold  one  like  body.  Outward  garments  and 
cloaks  may  be  borrowed,  but  never  the  sinews  and  strength 
of  the  body.  Most  of  those  that  converse  with  me  speak 
like  unto  these  essays;  but  I  know  not  whether  they  think 
alike.  The  Athenians  (as  Plato  averreth)  have  for  their 
part  great  care  to  be  fluent  and  eloquent  in  their  speech; 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN 


39 


the  Lacedaemonians  endeavour  to  be  short  and  compendi- 
ous; and  those  of  Crete  labour  more  to  be  plentiful  in  con- 
ceits than  in  language.  And  these  are  the  best.  Zeno 
was  wont  to  say  that  he  had  two  sorts  of  disciples:  the 
one  he  called  <t>i\o\byov$,  curious  to  learn  things,  and  those 
were  his  darlings;  the  other  he  termed  Xo7o$/Xoiw?,  who 
respected  nothing  more  than  the  language.  Yet  can  no 
man  say  but  that  to  speak  well  is  most  gracious  and  com- 
mendable, but  not  so  excellent  as  some  make  it;  and  I  am 
grieved  to  see  how  we  employ  most  part  of  our  time  about 
that  only.  I  would  first  know  mine  own  tongue  perfectly, 
then  my  neighbours'  with  whom  I  have  most  commerce. 
I  must  needs  acknowledge  that  the  Greek  and  Latin 
tongues  are  great  ornaments  in  a  gentleman,  but  they  are 
purchased  at  over-high  a  rate.  Use  it  who  list,  I  will  tell 
you  how  they  may  be  gotten  better,  cheaper,  and  much 
sooner  than  is  ordinarily  used,  which  was  tried  in  myself. 
My  late  father  having,  by  all  the  means  and  industry  that 
is  possible  for  a  man,  sought  among  the  wisest  and  men 
of  best  understanding  to  find  a  most  exquisite  and  ready 
way  of  teaching,  being  advised  of  the  inconveniences  then 
in  use,  was  given  to  understand  that  the  lingering  while 
and  best  part  of  our  youth  that  we  employ  in  learning  the 
tongues,  which  cost  them  nothing,  is  the  only  cause  we 
can  never  attain  to  that  absolute  perfection  of  skill  and 
knowledge  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans.  I  do  not  believe 
that  to  be  the  only  cause.  But  so  it  is,  the  expedient  my 
father  found  out  was  this:  that  being  yet  at  nurse,  and 
before  the  first  loosing  of  my  tongue,  I  was  delivered  to  a 
German,  who  died  since  (a  most  excellent  physician  in 
France),  he  being  then  altogether  ignorant  of  the  French 
tongue,  but  exquisitely  ready  and  skilful  in  the  Latin. 
This  man,  whom  my  father  had  sent  for  the  purpose,  and 
to  whom  he  gave  very  great  entertainment,  had  me  con- 
tinually in  his  arms,  and  was  mine  only  overseer.  There 
were  also  joined  unto  him  two  of  his  countrymen,  but  not 
so  learned,  whose  charge  was  to  attend  and  now  and  then 
to  play  with  me;  and  all  these  together  did  never  enter- 
tain me  with  other  than  the  Latin  tongue.  As  for  others 
of  his  household,  it  was  an  inviolable  rule  that  neither  him- 
self, nor  my  mother,  nor  man-  nor  maid-servant,  were  suf- 


40  MONTAIGNE 

fered  to  speak  one  word  in  my  company  except  such  Latin 
words  as  every  one  had  learned  to  chat  and  prattle  with 
me.  It  were  strange  to  tell  how  every  one  in  the  house 
profited  therein.  My  father  and  my  mother  learned  so 
much  Latin  that  for  a  need  they  could  understand  it  when 
they  heard  it  spoken,  even  so  did  all  the  household  serv- 
ants, namely,  such  as  were  nearest  and  most  about  me.  To 
be  short,  we  were  all  so  Latinized  that  the  towns  round 
about  us  had  their  share  of  it;  insomuch  as  even  at  this 
day  many  Latin  names,  both  of  workmen  and  of  their  tools, 
are  yet  in  use  among  them.  And  as  for  myself,  I  was  about 
six  years  old,  and  could  understand  no  more  French  or 
Perigordine  than  Arabic;  and  that  without  art,  without 
books,  rules,  or  grammar,  without  whipping  or  whining,  I 
had  gotten  as  pure  a  Latin  tongue  as  my  master  could  speak, 
the  rather  because  I  could  neither  mingle  nor  confound 
the  same  with  other  tongues.  If  for  an  essay  they  would 
give  me  a  theme,  whereas  the  fashion  in  colleges  is  to  give 
it  in  French,  I  had  it  in  bad  Latin,  to  reduce  the  same  into 
good.  And  Nicolas  Grouchy,  who  hath  written  "  De 
comitiis  Romanorum  ";  William  Guerente,  who  hath  com- 
mented Aristotle;  George  Buchanan,  that  famous  Scottish 
poet;  and  Mark  Antony  Muret,  whom  (while  he  lived) 
both  France  and  Italy  to  this  day  acknowledge  to  have 
been  the  best  orator — all  which  have  been  my  familiar 
tutors,  have  often  told  me  that  in  mine  infancy  I  had  the 
Latin  tongue  so  ready  and  so  perfect  that  themselves  feared 
to  take  me  in  hand.  And  Buchanan,  who  afterward  I  saw 
attending  on  the  Marshal  of  Brissac,  told  me  he  was  about 
to  write  a  treatise  of  the  institution  of  children,  and  that 
he  took  the  model  and  pattern  from  mine;  for  at  that  time 
he  had  the  charge  and  bringing  up  of  the  young  Earl  of 
Brissac,  whom  since  we  have  seen  prove  so  worthy  and 
so  valiant  a  captain.  As  for  the  Greek,  wherein  I  have 
but  small  understanding,  my  father  purposed  to  make  me 
learn  it  by  art;  but  by  new  and  unaccustomed  means — 
that  is,  by  way  of  recreation  and  exercise.  We  did  toss 
our  declinations  and  conjugations  to  and  fro,  as  they  do 
who  by  way  of  a  certain  game  at  tables  learn  both  arith- 
metic and  geometry.  For,  among  other  things,  he  had 
especially  been  persuaded  to  make  me  taste  and  apprehend 


EDUCATION  OF  CHILDREN  4I 

the  fruits  of  duty  and  science  by  an  unforced  kind  of  will, 
and  of  mine  own  choice,  and  without  any  compulsion  or 
rigour  to  bring  me  up  in  all  mildness  and  liberty;  yea,  with 
such  kind  of  superstition  that,  whereas  some  are  of  opinion 
that  suddenly  to  awaken  young  children,  and  as  it  were  by 
violence  to  startle  and  fright  them  out  of  their  dead  sleep 
in  a  morning  (wherein  they  are  more  heavy  and  deeper 
plunged  than  we),  doth  greatly  trouble  and  distemper  their 
brains,  he  would  every  morning  cause  me  to  be  awakened 
by  the  sound  of  some  instrument;  and  I  was  never  without 
a  servant  who  to  that  purpose  attended  upon  me.  This 
example  may  serve  to  judge  of  the  rest;  as  also  to  com- 
mend the  judgment  and  tender  affection  of  so  careful  and 
loving  a  father:  who  is  not  to  be  blamed,  though  he  reaped 
not  the  fruits  answerable  to  his  exquisite  toil  and  painful 
manuring.  Two  things  hindered  the  same:  first,  the  bar- 
renness and  unfit  soil;  for  howbeit  I  were  of  a  sound  and 
strong  constitution,  and  of  a  tractable  and  yielding  con- 
dition, yet  was  I  so  heavy,  so  sluggish,  and  so  dull  that 
I  could  not  be  roused  (yea,  were  it  to  go  to  play)  from 
out  mine  idle  drowsiness.  What  I  saw  I  saw  it  perfectly; 
and  under  this  heavy  and,  as  it  were,  Lethe  complexion 
did  I  breed  hardy  imaginations  and  opinions  far  above 
my  years.  My  spirit  was  very  slow,  and  would  go  no 
further  than  it  was  led  by  others;  my  apprehension  block- 
ish, my  invention  poor;  and,  besides,  I  had  a  marvellous 
defect  in  my  weak  memory:  it  is  therefore  no  wonder  if 
my  father  could  never  bring  me  to  any  perfection.  Sec- 
ondly, as  those  that  in  some  dangerous  sickness,  moved 
with  a  kind  of  hopeful  and  greedy  desire  of  perfect  health 
again,  give  ear  to  every  leech  or  empiric,  and  follow  all 
counsels,  the  good  man  being  exceedingly  fearful  to  com- 
mit any  oversight,  in  a  matter  he  took  so  to  heart,  suf- 
fered himself  at  last  to  be  led  away  by  the  common  opinion 
which,  like  unto  the  cranes,  followeth  over  those  that  go 
before,  and  yielded  to  custom,  having  those  no  longer 
about  him  that  had  given  him  his  first  directions,  and 
which  they  had  brought  out  of  Italy.  Being  but  six  years 
old,  I  was  sent  to  the  College  of  Guienne,  then  most  flour- 
ishing and  reputed  the  best  in  France,  where  it  is  impos- 
sible to  add  anything  to  the  great  care  he  had  both  to 


42  MONTAIGNE 

choose  the  best  and  most  sufficient  masters  that  could  be 
found  to  read  unto  me,  as  also  for  all  other  circumstances 
pertaining  to  my  education;  wherein,  contrary  to  usual 
customs  of  colleges,  he  observed  many  particular  rules. 
But  so  it  is,  it  was  ever  a  college.  My  Latin  tongue  was 
forthwith  corrupted,  whereof  by  reason  of  discontinuance 
I  afterward  lost  all  manner  of  use;  which  new  kind  of  in- 
stitution stood  me  in  no  other  stead  but  that  at  my  first 
admittance  it  made  me  to  overskip  some  of  the  lower 
forms  and  to  be  placed  in  the  highest.  For  at  thirteen 
years  of  age,  that  I  left  the  college,  I  had  read  over  the 
whole  course  of  philosophy  (as  they  call  it),  but  with 
so  small  profit  that  I  can  now  make  no  account  of  it. 
The  first  taste  or  feeling  I  had  of  books  was  of  the  pleas- 
ure I  took  in  reading  the  fables  of  Ovid's  "  Metamor- 
phoses ";  for,  being  but  seven  or  eight  years  old,  I  would 
steal  and  sequester  myself  from  all  other  delights,  only  to 
read  them:  forasmuch  as  the  tongue  wherein  they  were 
written  was  to  me  natural;  and  it  was  the  easiest  book  I 
knew,  and  by  reason  of  the  matter  therein  contained  most 
agreeing  with  my  young  age.  For  of  King  Arthur,  of 
Launcelot  du  Lake,  of  Amadis,  of  Huon  of  Bordeaux,  and 
such  idle  time-consuming  and  wit-besotting  trash  of  books 
wherein  youth  doth  commonly  amuse  itself,  I  was  not  so 
much  as  acquainted  with  their  names,  and  to  this  day 
know  not  their  bodies  nor  what  they  contain,  so  exact  was 
my  discipline.  Whereby  I  became  more  careless  to  study 
my  other  prescribed  lessons.  And  well  did  it  fall  out  for 
my  purpose  that  I  had  to  deal  with  a  very  discreet  mas- 
ter, who  out  of  his  judgment  could  with  such  dexterity 
wink  at  and  second  my  untowardness,  and  such  other 
faults  that  were  in  me.  For  by  that  means  I  read  over 
Virgil's  "  yEneados,"  Terence,  Plautus,  and  other  Italian 
comedies,  allured  thereunto  by  the  pleasantness  of  their 
several  subjects.  Had  he  been  so  foolishly  severe  or  so 
severely  froward  as  to  cross  this  course  of  mine,  I  think 
verily  I  had  never  brought  anything  from  the  college  but 
the  hate  and  contempt  of  books,  as  doth  the  greatest  part 
of  our  nobility.  Such  was  his  discretion,  and  so  warily 
did  he  behave  himself  that  he  saw  and  would  not  see:  he 
would  foster  and  increase  my  longing,  suffering  me  but 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN  .         43 

by  stealth  and  by  snatches  to  glut  myself  with  those  books, 
holding  ever  a  gentle  hand  over  me  concerning  other  regu- 
lar studies.  For  the  chiefest  thing  my  father  required  at 
their  hands  (unto  whose  charge  he  had  committed  me) 
was  a  kind  of  well-conditioned  mildness  and  facility  of 
complexion.  And,  to  say  truth,  mine  had  no  other  fault 
but  a  certain  dull  languishing  and  heavy  slothfulness.  The 
danger  was  not,  I  should  do  ill,  but  that  I  should  do 
nothing. 

No  man  did  ever  suspect  I  would  prove  a  bad  but  an 
unprofitable  man,  foreseeing  in  me  rather  a  kind  of  idle- 
ness than  a  voluntary  craftiness.  I  am  not  so  self-con- 
ceited but  I  perceive  what  hath  followed.  The  complaints 
that  are  daily  buzzed  in  mine  ears  are  these:  that  I  am 
idle,  cold,  and  negligent  in  offices  of  friendship  and  duty 
to  my  parents  and  kinsfolks;  and  touching  public  offices, 
that  I  am  over-singular  and  disdainful.  And  those  that 
are  most  injurious  can  not  ask,  wherefore  I  have  taken, 
and  why  I  have  not  paid?  but  may  rather  demand,  why  I 
do  not  quit,  and  wherefore  I  do  not  give?  I  would  take 
it  as  a  favour  they  should  wish  such  effects  of  superero- 
gation in  me.  But  they  are  unjust  and  over-partial  that 
will  go  about  to  exact  that  from  me  which  I  owe  not 
with  more  rigour  than  they  will  exact  from  themselves 
that  which  they  owe;  wherein  if  they  condemn  me  they 
utterly  cancel  both  the  gratifying  of  the  action  and  the 
gratitude  which  thereby  would  be  due  to  me.  Whereas 
the  active  well-doing  should  be  of  more  consequence,  pro- 
ceeding from  my  hand,  in  regard  I  have  no  passive  at 
all.  Wherefore  I  may  so  much  the  more  freely  dispose 
of  my  fortune,  by  how  much  more  it  is  mine,  and  of  my- 
self that  am  most  mine  own.  Notwithstanding,  if  I  were 
a  great  blazoner  of  mine  own  actions,  I  might  peradven- 
ture  bar  such  reproaches,  and  justly  upbraid  some,  that 
they  are  not  so  much  offended  because  I  do  not  enough 
as  for  that  I  may,  and  it  lies  in  my  power  to  do  much 
more  than  I  do.  Yet  my  mind  ceased  not  at  the  same 
time  to  have  peculiar  unto  itself  well-settled  motions,  true 
and  open  judgments  concerning  the  objects  which  it  knew; 
which  alone,  and  without  any  help  or  communication,  it 
would  digest.  And  among  other  things  I  verily  believe 


44  MONTAIGNE 

it  would  have  proved  altogether  incapable  and  unfit  to 
yield  unto  force  or  stoop  unto  violence.  Shall  I  account 
or  relate  this  quality  of  my  infancy,  which  was  a  kind  of 
boldness  in  my  looks,  and  gentle  softness  in  my  voice,  and 
affability  in  my  gestures,  and  a  dexterity  in  conforming 
myself  to  the  parts  I  undertook?  for  before  the  age  of  the 

Alter  ab  undecimo  turn  me  vix  ceperat  annus." 
"  Years  had  I  (to  make  even) 
Scarce  two  above  eleven." 

I  have  undergone  and  represented  the  chiefest  parts  in  the 
Latin  tragedies  of  Buchanan,  Guerente,  and  of  Muret, 
which  in  great  state  were  acted  and  played  in  our  College 
of  Guienne;  wherein  Andreas  Goveanus,  our  rector  prin- 
cipal, who,  as  in  all  other  parts  belonging  to  his  charge, 
was  without  comparison  the  chiefest  rector  of  France,  and 
myself  (without  ostentation  be  it  spoken)  was  reputed,  if 
not  a  chief  master,  yet  a  principal  actor  in  them.  It  is  an 
exercise  I  rather  commend  than  disallow  in  young  gentle- 
men; and  have  seen  some  of  our  princes  (in  imitation  of 
some  of  former  ages),  both  commendably  and  honestly, 
in  their  proper  persons  act  and  play  some  parts  in  trage- 
dies. It  hath  heretofore  been  esteemed  a  lawful  exercise 
and  a  tolerable  profession  in  men  of  honour,  namely,  in 
Greece.  Aristoni  tragico  actori  rem  aperit:  huic  et  genus 
et  fortuna  honesta  erant:  nee  ars,  quia  nihil  tale  apud 
Graecos  pudori  est,  ea  deformabat 38 — "  He  imparts  the 
matter  to  Ariston,  a  player  of  tragedies,  whose  progeny 
and  fortune  were  both  honest;  nor  did  his  profession  dis- 
grace them,  because  no  such  matter  is  a  disparagement 
among  the  Grecians." 

And  I  have  ever  accused  them  of  impertinency  that 
condemn  and  disallow  such  kinds  of  recreations,  and  blame 
those  of  injustice  that  refuse  good  and  honest  comedians, 
or  (as  we  call  them)  players,  to  enter  our  good  towns, 
and  grudge  the  common  people  such  public  sports.  Politic 
and  well-ordered  commonwealths  endeavour  rather  care- 
fully to  unite  and  assemble  their  citizens  together;  as  in 
serious  offices  of  devotion,  so  in  honest  exercises  of  recre- 
ation. Common  society  and  loving  friendship  is  thereby 
cherished  and  increased.  And,  besides,  they  can  not  have 


EDUCATION   OF   CHILDREN 


45 


more  formal  and  regular  pastimes  allowed  them  than  such 
as  are  acted  and  represented  in  open  view  of  all,  and  in 
the  presence  of  the  magistrates  themselves.  And  if  I  might 
bear  sway,  I  would  think  it  reasonable  that  princes  should 
sometimes,  at  their  proper  charges,  gratify  the  common 
people  with  them,  as  an  argument  of  a  fatherly  affection 
and  loving  goodness  toward  them;  and  that  in  populous 
and  frequented  cities  there  should  be  theatres  and  places 
appointed  for  such  spectacles,  as  a  diverting  of  worse  in- 
conveniences and  secret  actions.  But  to  come  to  my  in- 
tended purpose,  there  is  no  better  way  to  allure  the  affec- 
tion and  to  entice  the  appetite;  otherwise  a  man  shall  breed 
but  asses  laden  with  books.  With  jerks  of  rods  they  have 
their  satchels  full  of  learning  given  them  to  keep.  Which 
to  do  well  one  must  not  only  harbour  in  himself,  but  wed 
and  marry  the  same  with  his  mind. 


NOTES 


1  Cic.,  "  De  Nat.,"  1.  i. 

1  Dante,  "  Inferno,"  cant,  xi,  93. 

*  Sen.,  "  Epist,"  xxxiii. 

*  Hor.,  1.  i,  "  Od.,"  ii,  4- 

*    ,    ••  it.    rv*  s~\.  99    4        •• 


10  Pers.,  "  Sat.,"  iii,  69. 

11  Ibid.,  67. 

11  Virg.,  "  ^n.,"  1.  iii,  853. 


Sat.,"  V,  64. 

Epist.,"  cxxv. 


Hor.,  "  Epist,"  xvii,  23. 

Hor.,  "  Epist.,"  xvii,  25. 

Ibid.,  29. 

Cic.,  "  Tusc.  Qu.,"  1.  iv. 

Cic.,  "  Tusc.  Qu.,"  1.  ii. 

Hor.,  "  Art.  Poet,"  311. 

Sen.,  "  Controv.,"  1.  vii,  proae. 

Cic.,  "  De  Fin.,"  1.  iii,  c.  5. 

Hor.,  1.  i,  "  Sat.,"  iv,  8. 

Hor.,  1.  i,  "  Sat.,"  iv,  58. 

Ibid.,  62. 

Sen.,  "  Epist.,"  xl. 

Cic.,  "  Acad.  Qu.,"  1.  iv. 

Sen.,  "  Epist,"  liii. 

"  Epitaph  on  Lucan,"  6. 

Sen.,  "  Epist,"  xl. 

Ibid.,  "  Epist.,"  Ixxv. 

Virg.,  "  Buc.,"  Eel.  viii,  39- 

Liv.,  "  Deo.,"  iii,  1.  iv. 


THE  DEFENCE  OF  POESY 

BY 

SIR   PHILIP   SIDNEY 


.SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  was  born  in  Penshurst,  Kent,  November  29,  1554. 
The  scenery  about  his  birthplace  is  described  in  Ben  Jonson's  "  Forest." 
His  father,  Sir  Henry  Sidney,  was  ambassador  of  Edward  VI  at  the 
French  court.  His  friend  and  biographer,  Fulke  Greville,  Lord  Brooke, 
says  of  Sir  Philip  :  "  Of  his  youth  I  will  report  no  other  wonder  but  this, 
that  though  I  lived  with  him  and  knew  him  from  a  child,  yet  I  never 
knew  him  other  than  a  man  ;  with  such  staidness  of  mind,  lovely  and 
familiar  gravity,  as  carried  grace  and  reverence  above  greater  years. 
His  talk  ever  of  knowledge,  and  his  very  play  tending  to  enrich  his 
mind."  He  was  educated  at  Oxford,  and  then  travelled  in  France,  Ger- 
many, and  Italy.  On  his  return,  he  became  a  familiar  character  at  the 
court  of  Elizabeth,  where  his  uncle,  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  was  for  a  time 
powerful.  Sidney  was  ambassador  first  to  Rudolph  II  of  Austria,  and 
then  to  William  of  Orange.  He  retired  to  Wilton  in  1580,  and  there 
wrote  his  "Arcadia"  and  his  "Defence  of  Poesy" — at  first  entitled 
"Apology  for  Poetry" — which  was  not  published  till  1591.  He  returned 
to  court  in  1583,  was  knighted,  and  married  a  daughter  of  Sir  Francis 
Walsingham.  He  accompanied  his  uncle,  who  commanded  the  forces 
sent  to  the  Netherlands  to  take  part  in  the  war  against  the  Spaniards, 
and  in  an  action  at  Zutphen,  October  2,  1586,  received  a  mortal  wound, 
of  which  he  died  on  the  iyth.  Besides  the  works  mentioned  above,  Sid- 
ney wrote  a  poem  in  sonnets,  entitled  "  Astrophel  and  Stella."  Charles 
Lamb  devotes  one  of  his  essays  to  these  sonnets,  which  he  greatly  ad- 
mired. Sidney  stands  as  the  historical  model  for  a  perfect  gentleman, 
and  his  character  is  universally  admired.  His  biography  has  been  writ- 
ten over  and  over  again.  Some  lines  in  an  elegy  on  him  by  his  friend 
Mathew  Roydon  are  famous  : 

"A  sweet,  attractive  kind  of  grace, 

A  full  assurance  given  by  looks, 
Continual  comfort  in  a  face, 

The  lineaments  of  Gospel  books — 
I  trow  that  countenance  can  not  lie 
Whose  thoughts  are  legible  in  the  eye." 


THE  DEFENCE  OF  POESY 

WHEN  the  right  virtuous  E.  W.1  and  I  were  at 
the  emperor's  court  together  we  gave  ourselves 
to  learn  horsemanship  of  Gio.  Pietro  Pugliano; 
one  that,  with  great  commendation,  had  the  place  of  an 
esquire  in  his  stable:  and  he,  according  to  the  fertileness 
of  the  Italian  wit,  did  not  only  afford  us  the  demonstra- 
tion of  his  practice,  but  sought  to  enrich  our  minds  with 
the  contemplation  therein,  which  he  thought  most  precious. 
But  with  none,  I  remember,  mine  ears  were  at  any  time 
more  laden  than  when  (either  angered  with  slow  payment 
or  moved  with  our  learner-like  admiration)  he  exercised 
his  speech  in  the  praise  of  his  faculty. 

He  said  soldiers  were  the  noblest  estate  of  mankind, 
and  horsemen  the  noblest  of  soldiers.  He  said  they  were 
the  masters  of  war  and  ornaments  of  peace,  speedy  goers, 
and  strong  abiders,  triumphers  both  in  camps  and  courts: 
nay,  to  so  unbelieved  a  point  he  proceeded  as  that  no 
earthly  thing  bred  such  wonder  to  a  prince  as  to  be  a  good 
horseman:  skill  of  government  was  but  a  "  pedanteria  "  in 
comparison.  Then  would  he  add  certain  praises,  by  tell- 
ing what  a  peerless  beast  the  horse  was,  the  only  service- 
able courtier,  without  flattery,  the  beast  of  most  beauty, 
faithfulness,  courage,  and  such  more  that  if  I  had  not  been 
a  piece  of  a  logician  before  I  came  to  him  I  think  he  would 
have  persuaded  me  to  have  wished  myself  a  horse.  But 
thus  much,  at  least,  with  his  no  few  words  he  drove  into 
me  that  self-love  is  better  than  any  gilding  to  make  that 
seem  gorgeous  wherein  ourselves  be  parties. 

Wherein,  if  Pugliano's  strong  affection  and  weak  argu- 
ments will  not  satisfy  you,  I  will  give  you  a  nearer  ex- 
ample of  myself,  who,  I  know  not  by  what  mischance,  in 
these  my  not  old  years  and  idlest  times,  having  slipped 

49 


50  SIDNEY 

into  the  title  of  a  poet,  am  provoked  to  say  something  unto 
you  in  the  defence  of  that  my  unelected  vocation;  which 
if  I  handle  with  more  good-will  than  good  reasons  bear 
with  me,  since  the  scholar  is  to  be  pardoned  that  followeth 
the  steps  of  his  master. 

And  yet  I  must  say  that,  as  I  have  more  just  cause 
to  make  a  pitiful  defence  of  poor  poetry,  which,  from 
almost  the  highest  estimation  of  learning,  is  fallen  to  be 
the  laughing-stock  of  children;  so  have  I  need  to  bring 
some  more  available  proofs,  since  the  former  is  by  no 
man  barred  of  his  deserved  credit,  whereas  the  silly  latter 
hath  had  even  the  names  of  philosophers  used  to  the  de- 
facing of  it,  with  great  danger  of  civil  war  among  the 
Muses. 

And  first,  truly,  to  all  them  that,  professing  learning, 
inveigh  against  poetry,  may  justly  be  objected  that  they 
go  very  near  to  ungratefulness  to  seek  to  deface  that  which, 
in  the  noblest  nations  and  languages  that  are  known,  hath 
been  the  first  light-giver  to  ignorance,  and  first  nurse, 
whose  milk,  by  little  and  little,  enabled  them  to  feed  after- 
ward of  tougher  knowledges.  And  will  you  play  the 
hedge-hog  that,  being  received  into  the  den,  drove  out  his 
host?  or  rather  the  vipers,  that  with  their  birth  kill  their 
parents? 

Let  learned  Greece,  in  any  of  her  manifold  sciences,  be 
able  to  show  me  one  book  before  Musaeus,  Homer,  and 
Hesiod,  all  three  nothing  else  but  poets.  Nay,  let  any 
history  be  brought  that  can  say  any  writers  were  there 
before  them  if  they  were  not  men  of  the  same  skill,  as 
Orpheus,  Linus,  and  some  others  are  named,  who,  having 
been  the  first  of  that  country  that  made  pens  deliverers 
of  their  knowledge  to  posterity,  may  justly  challenge  to 
be  called  their  fathers  in  learning.  For  not  only  in  time 
they  had  this  priority  (although  in  itself  antiquity  be  ven- 
erable), but  went  before  them,  as  causes  to  draw,  with  their 
charming  sweetness,  the  wild  untamed  wits  to  an  admira- 
tion of  knowledge.  So  as  Amphion  was  said  to  move 
stones  with  his  poetry  to  build  Thebes,  and  Orpheus  to  be 
listened  to  by  beasts;  indeed,  stony  and  beastly  people:  so 
among  the  Romans  were  Livius  Andronicus  and  Ennius: 
so  in  the  Italian  language,  the  first  that  made  it  to  aspire 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  51 

to  be  a  treasure-house  of  science  were  the  poets  Dante, 
Boccace,  and  Petrarch:  so  in  our  English  were  Gower  and 
Chaucer;  after  whom,  encouraged  and  delighted  with  their 
excellent  foregoing,  others  have  followed  to  beautify  our 
mother  tongue,  as  well  in  the  same  kind  as  other  arts. 

This  did  so  notably  show  itself  that  the  philosophers  of 
Greece  durst  not  a  long  time  appear  to  the  world  but  under 
the  mask  of  poets:  so  Thales,  Empedocles,  and  Parmenides 
sang  their  natural  philosophy  in  verses:  so  did  Pythagoras 
and  Phocylides  their  moral  counsels;  so  did  Tyrtaeus  in 
war  matters;  and  Solon  in  matters  of  policy;  or  rather 
they,  being  poets,  did  exercise  their  delightful  vein  in  those 
points  of  highest  knowledge  which  before  them  lay  hidden 
to  the  world:  for  that  wise  Solon  was  directly  a  poet  it 
is  manifest,  having  written,  in  verse,  the  notable  fable  of 
the  Atlantic  island,  which  was  continued  by  Plato.  And, 
truly,  even  Plato,  whosoever  well  considereth,  shall  find 
that  in  the  body  of  his  work,  though  the  inside  and  strength 
were  philosophy,  the  skin,  as  it  were,  and  beauty,  depended 
most  of  poetry.  For  all  stands  upon  dialogues;  wherein 
he  feigns  many  honest  burgesses  of  Athens  speaking  of 
such  matters  that  if  they  had  been  set  on  the  rack  they 
would  never  have  confessed  them:  besides,  his  poetical  de- 
scribing the  circumstances  of  their  meetings,  as  the  well 
ordering  of  a  banquet,  the  delicacy  of  a  walk,  with  inter- 
lacing mere  tales,  as  Gyges's  "Ring,"  and  others;  which 
who  knows  not  to  be  flowers  of  poetry  did  never  walk  into 
Apollo's  garden. 

And  even  historiographers,  although  their  lips  sound 
of  things  done,  and  verity  be  written  in  their  foreheads, 
have  been  glad  to  borrow  both  fashion  and,  perchance, 
weight  of  the  poets:  so  Herodotus  entitled  the  books  of 
his  history  by  the  names  of  the  nine  Muses;  and  both  he, 
and  all  the  rest  that  followed  him,  either  stole  or  usurped, 
of  poetry,  their  passionate  describing  of  passions,  the  many 
particularities  of  battle  which  no  man  could  affirm;  or,  if 
that  be  denied  me,  long  orations,  put  in  the  mouths  of 
great  kings  and  captains,  which  it  is  certain  they  never 
pronounced. 

So  that,  truly,  neither  philosopher  nor  historiographer 
could,  at  the  first,  have  entered  into  the  gates  of  popular 


52  SIDNEY 

judgments  if  they  had  not  taken  a  great  disport  of  poetry; 
which  in  all  nations,  at  this  day,  where  learning  flourisheth 
not,  is  plain  to  be  seen;  in  all  which  they  have  some  feel- 
ing of  poetry.  In  Turkey,  besides  their  lawgiving  divines 
they  have  no  other  writers  but  poets.  In  our  neighbour- 
country  Ireland,  where,  truly,  learning  goes  very  bare,  yet 
are  their  poets  held  in  a  devout  reverence.  Even  among 
the  most  barbarous  and  simple  Indians,  where  no  writing 
is,  yet  have  they  their  poets,  who  make  and  sing  songs, 
which  they  call  "  arentos,"  both  of  their  ancestors'  deeds 
and  praises  of  their  gods.  A  sufficient  probability  that  if 
ever  learning  come  among  them  it  must  be  by  having 
their  hard,  dull  wits  softened  and  sharpened  with  the  sweet 
delight  of  poetry;  for  until  they  find  a  pleasure  in  the 
exercise  of  the  mind  great  promises  of  much  knowledge 
will  little  persuade  them  that  know  not  the  fruits  of  knowl- 
edge. In  Wales  the  true  remnant  of  the  ancient  Britons, 
as  there  are  good  authorities  to  show  the  long  time  they 
had  poets,  which  they  called  bards,  so  through  all  the  con- 
quests of  Romans,  Saxons,  Danes,  and  Normans,  some 
of  whom  did  seek  to  ruin  all  memory  of  learning  from 
among  them,  yet  do  their  poets,  even  to  this  day,  last; 
so  as  it  is  not  more  notable  in  the  soon  beginning  than 
in  long  continuing. 

But  since  the  authors  of  most  of  our  sciences  were 
the  Romans,  and,  before  them,  the  Greeks,  let  us  a  little 
stand  upon  their  authorities,  but  even  so  far  as  to  see  what 
names  they  have  given  unto  this  now  scorned  skill.  Among 
the  Romans  a  poet  was  called  "  vates,"  which  is  as  much 
as  a  diviner,  foreseer,  or  prophet,  as  by  his  conjoined  words 
"  vaticinium  "  and  "  vaticinari "  is  manifest,  so  heavenly 
a  title  did  that  excellent  people  bestow  upon  this  heart- 
ravishing  knowledge!  And  so  far  were  they  carried  into 
the  admiration  thereof  that  they  thought  in  the  change- 
able hitting  upon  any  such  verses  great  foretokens  of  their 
following  fortunes  were  placed.  Whereupon  grew  the 
word  of  "  sortes  Virgilianae  " ;  when,  by  sudden  opening 
of  Virgil's  book,  they  lighted  upon  some  verse,  as  it  is 
reported  by  many,  whereof  the  histories  of  the  emperors' 
lives  are  full:  as  of  Albinus,  the  governor  of  our  island, 
who,  in  his  childhood,  met  with  this  verse: 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY 
From  an  engraving  after  a  painting  by  Isaac  Oliver 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  53 

"  Arma  amens  capio,  nee  sat  rationis  in  armis  "; 
and  in  his  age  performed  it.  Although  it  were  a  very  vain 
and  godless  superstition;  as  also  it  was  to  think  spirits 
were  commanded  by  such  verses:  whereupon  this  word 
charms,  derived  of  "  carmina,"  cometh,  so  yet  serveth  it 
to  show  the  great  reverence  those  wits  were  held  in;  and 
altogether  not  without  ground,  since  both  the  oracles  of 
Delphi  and  the  Sibyl's  prophecies  were  wholly  delivered 
in  verses;  for  that  same  exquisite  observing  of  number 
and  measure  in  the  words,  and  that  high-flying  liberty  of 
conceit  proper  to  the  poet  did  seem  to  have  some  divine 
force  in  it. 

And  may  not  I  presume  a  little  further  to  show  the 
reasonableness  of  this  word  "  vates,"  and  say  that  the  holy 
David's  Psalms  are  a  divine  poem?  If  I  do,  I  shall  not 
do  it  without  the  testimony  of  great  learned  men,  both 
ancient  and  modern.  But  even  the  name  of  Psalms  will 
speak  for  me,  which,  being  interpreted,  is  nothing  but 
songs:  then,  that  it  is  fully  written  in  metre,  as  all  learned 
Hebricians  agree,  although  the  rules  be  not  yet  fully  found. 
Lastly,  and  principally,  his  handling  his  prophecy,  which 
is  merely  poetical.  For  what  else  is  the  awakening  his  mu- 
sical instruments;  the  often  and  free  changing  of  persons; 
his  notable  prosopopoeias,  when  he  maketh  you,  as  it  were, 
see  God  coming  in  his  majesty;  his  telling  of  the  beasts' 
joyfulness,  and  hills  leaping,  but  a  heavenly  poesy;  wherein 
almost  he  showeth  himself  a  passionate  lover  of  that  un- 
speakable and  everlasting  beauty,  to  be  seen  by  the  eyes 
of  the  mind,  only  cleared  by  faith?  But,  truly,  now,  hav- 
ing named  him,  I  fear  I  seem  to  profane  that  holy  name, 
applying  it  to  poetry,  which  is,  among  us,  thrown  down 
to  so  ridiculous  an  estimation.  But  they  that,  with  quiet 
judgments,  will  look  a  little  deeper  into  it,  shall  find  the 
end  and  working  of  it  such  as,  being  rightly  applied,  de- 
serveth  not  to  be  scourged  out  of  the  church  of  God. 

But  now  let  us  see  how  the  Greeks  have  named  it,  and 
how  they  deemed  of  it.  The  Greeks  named  him  TroiijTrjv, 
which  name  hath,  as  the  most  excellent,  gone  through 
other  languages;  it  cometh  of  this  word  TTOU-IV,  which  is 
"  to  make  ";  wherein,  I  know  not  whether  by  luck  or  wis- 
dom, we  Englishmen  have  met  with  the  Greeks  in  calling 


54  SIDNEY 

him  "  a  maker,"  which  name,  how  high  and  incomparable 
a  title  it  is,  I  had  rather  were  known  by  marking  the  scope 
of  other  sciences  than  by  any  partial  allegation.  There  is 
no  art  delivered  unto  mankind  that  hath  not  the  works 
of  Nature  for  his  principal  object,  without  which  they  could 
not  consist,  and  on  which  they  so  depend,  as  they  become 
actors  and  players,  as  it  were,  of  what  Nature  will  have 
set  forth.  So  doth  the  astronomer  look  upon  the  stars, 
and  by  that  he  seeth  set  down  what  order  Nature  hath 
taken  therein.  So  doth  the  geometrician  and  arithmetician 
in  their  diverse  sorts  of  quantities.  So  doth  the  musician 
in  times  tell  you,  which  by  Nature  agree,  which  not.  The 
natural  philosopher  thereon  hath  his  name;  and  the  moral 
philosopher  standeth  upon  the  natural  virtues,  vices,  or 
passions  of  man:  and  follow  Nature,  saith  he,  therein,  and 
thou  shalt  not  err.  The  lawyer  saith  what  men  have  de- 
termined. The  historian,  what  men  have  done.  The  gram- 
marian speaketh  only  of  the  rules  of  speech;  and  the  rhet- 
orician and  logician,  considering  what  in  Nature  will  soon- 
est prove  and  persuade,  thereon  give  artificial  rules,  which 
still  are  compassed  within  the  circle  of  a  question,  accord- 
ing to  the  proposed  matter.  The  physician  weigheth  the 
nature  of  man's  body,  and  the  nature  of  things  helpful  and 
hurtful  unto  it.  And  the  metaphysic,  though  it  be  in  the 
second  and  abstract  notions,  and  therefore  be  counted 
supernatural,  yet  doth  he,  indeed,  build  upon  the  depth 
of  Nature.  Only  the  poet,  disdaining  to  be  tied  to  any 
such  subjection,  lifted  up  with  the  vigour  of  his  own  in- 
vention, doth  grow,  in  effect,  into  another  nature:  in  mak- 
ing things  either  better  than  Nature  bringeth  forth,  or 
quite  anew;  forms  such  as  never  were  in  Nature,  as  the 
heroes,  demi-gods,  cyclops,  chimeras,  furies,  and  such  like; 
so  as  he  goeth  hand  in  hand  with  Nature,  not  inclosed 
within  the  narrow  warrant  of  her  gifts,  but  freely  ranging 
within  the  zodiac  of  his  own  wit.  Nature  never  set  forth 
the  earth  in  so  rich  tapestry  as  divers  poets  have  done; 
neither  with  so  pleasant  rivers,  fruitful  trees,  sweet-smelling 
flowers,  nor  whatsoever  else  may  make  the  too-much-loved 
earth  more  lovely;  her  world  is  brazen,  the  poets  only  de- 
liver a  golden. 

But  let  those  things  alone,  and  go  to  man;  for  whom 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  55 

as  the  other  things  are,  so  it  seemeth  in  him  her  utter- 
most cunning  is  employed;  and  know,  whether  she  have 
brought  forth  so  true  a  lover  as  Theagenes;  so  constant 
a  friend  as  Pylades;  so  valiant  a  man  as  Orlando:  so  right 
a  prince  as  Xenophon's  Cyrus;  and  so  excellent  a  man 
every  way  as  Virgil's  ^neas?  Neither  let  this  be  jestingly 
conceived,  because  the  works  of  the  one  be  essential,  the 
other  in  imitation  or  fiction;  for  every  understanding  know- 
eth  the  skill  of  each  artificer  standeth  in  that  idea,  or  fore- 
conceit  of  the  work,  and  not  in  the  work  itself.  And 
that  the  poet  hath  that  idea  is  manifest  by  the  delivering 
them  forth  in  such  excellency  as  he  had  imagined  them: 
which  delivering  forth,  also,  is  not  wholly  imaginative,  as 
we  are  wont  to  say  by  them  that  build  castles  in  the  air; 
but  so  far  substantially  it  worketh  not  only  to  make  a 
Cyrus,  which  had  been  but  a  particular  excellency,  as  Na- 
ture might  have  done;  but  to  bestow  a  Cyrus  upon  the 
world  to  make  many  Cyruses;  if  they  will  learn  aright, 
why  and  how  that  maker  made  him.  Neither  let  it  be 
deemed  too  saucy  a  comparison  to  balance  the  highest 
point  of  man's  wit  with  the  efficacy  of  Nature;  but  rather 
give  right  honour  to  the  heavenly  Maker  of  that  maker, 
who,  having  made  man  to  his  own  likeness,  set  him  be- 
yond and  over  all  the  works  of  that  second  nature;  which 
in  nothing  he  showeth  so  much  as  in  poetry;  when,  with 
the  force  of  a  divine  breath,  he  bringeth  things  forth  sur- 
passing her  doings,  with  no  small  arguments  to  the  in- 
credulous of  that  first  accursed  fall  of  Adam;  since  our 
erected  wit  maketh  us  know  what  perfection  is,  and  yet 
our  infected  will  keepeth  us  from  reaching  unto  it.  But 
these  arguments  will  by  few  be  understood,  and  by  fewer 
granted:  thus  much  I  hope  will  be  given  me  that  the 
Greeks,  with  some  probability  of  reason,  gave  him  the 
name  above  all  names  of  learning. 

Now  let  us  go  to  a  more  ordinary  opening  of  him,  that 
the  truth  may  be  the  more  palpable;  and  so,  I  hope,  though 
we  get  not  so  unmatched  a  praise  as  the  etymology  of 
his  names  will  grant,  yet  his  very  description,  which  no 
man  will  deny,  shall  not  justly  be  barred  from  a  principal 
commendation. 

Poesy,  therefore,  is  an  art  of  imitation;  for  so  Aristotle 


56  SIDNEY 

termeth  it  in  the  word  JJU/JLTJO-K  ;  that  is  to  say,  a  represent- 
ing, counterfeiting,  or  figuring  forth:  to  speak  metaphor- 
ically, a  speaking  picture;  with  this  end  to  teach  and  de- 
light. 

Of  this  have  been  three  general  kinds:  the  chief,  both 
in  antiquity  and  excellency,  were  they  that  did  imitate 
the  inconceivable  excellencies  of  God:  such  were  David 
in  his  Psalms;  Solomon  in  his  Song  of  Songs,  in  his  Ec- 
clesiastes,  and  Proverbs;  Moses  and  Deborah  in  their 
hymns;  and  the  writer  of  Job;  which,  beside  others,  the 
learned  Emanuel  Tremellius  and  Fr.  Junius  do  entitle  the 
poetical  part  of  the  Scripture:  against  these  none  will 
speak  that  hath  the  Holy  Ghost  in  due  holy  reverence.  In 
this  kind,  though  in  a  wrong  divinity,  were  Orpheus,  Am- 
phion,  Homer  in  his  hymns,  and  many  others,  both  Greeks 
and  Romans.  And  this  poesy  must  be  used  by  whosoever 
will  follow  St.  Paul's  counsel,  in  singing  psalms  when  they 
are  merry;  and  I  know  is  used  with  the  fruit  of  comfort 
by  some  when,  in  sorrowful  pangs  of  their  death-bringing 
sins,  they  find  the  consolation  of  the  never-leaving  good- 
ness. 

The  second  kind  is  of  them  that  deal  with  matters  philo- 
sophical; either  moral,  as  Tyrtaeus,  Phocylides,  Cato;  or 
natural,  as  Lucretius,  Virgil's  "  Georgics  ";  or  astronomi- 
cal, as  Manilius  and  Pontanus;  or  historical,  as  Lucan; 
which  who  mislike  the  fault  is  in  their  judgment,  quite  out 
of  taste,  and  not  in  the  sweet  food  of  sweetly  uttered 
knowledge. 

But  because  this  second  sort  is  wrapped  within  the 
fold  of  the  proposed  subject,  and  takes  not  the  free  course 
of  his  own  invention;  whether  they  properly  be  poets,  or 
no,  let  grammarians  dispute,  and  go  to  the  third,  indeed 
right  poets,  of  whom  chiefly  this  question  ariseth:  betwixt 
whom  and  these  second  is  such  a  kind  of  difference  as 
betwixt  the  meaner  sort  of  painters,  who  counterfeit  only 
such  faces  as  are  set  before  them;  and  the  more  excellent, 
who  having  no  law  but  wit,  bestow  that  in  colours  upon 
you  which  is  fittest  for  the  eye  to  see;  as  the  constant, 
though  lamenting  look  of  Lucretia,  when  she  punished  in 
herself  another's  fault:  wherein  he  painteth  not  Lucretia, 
whom  he  never  saw,  but  painteth  the  outward  beauty  of 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY 


57 


such  a  virtue.  For  these  three  be  they  which  most  prop- 
erly do  imitate  to  teach  and  delight;  and  to  imitate,  bor- 
row nothing  of  what  is,  hath  been,  or  shall  be;  but  range 
only,  reined  with  learned  discretion,  into  the  divine  con- 
sideration of  what  may  be  and  should  be.  These  be  they 
that,  as  the  first  and  most  noble  sort,  may  justly  be  termed 
"vates":  so  these  are  waited  on  in  the  excellentest  lan- 
guages and  best  understandings,  the  fore-described  name 
of  poets.  For  these,  indeed,  do  merely  make  to  imitate, 
and  imitate  both  to  delight  and  teach,  and  delight  to  move 
men  to  take  that  goodness  in  hand  which,  without  delight, 
they  would  fly  as  from  a  stranger;  and  teach  to  make  them 
know  that  goodness  whereunto  they  are  moved:  which 
being  the  noblest  scope  to  which  ever  any  learning  was 
directed,  yet  want  there  not  idle  tongues  to  bark  at  them. 
These  be  subdivided  into  sundry  more  special  denom- 
inations: the  most  notable  be  the  heroic,  lyric,  tragic, 
comic,  satiric,  iambic,  elegiac,  pastoral,  and  certain  others; 
some  of  these  being  termed  according  to  the  matter  they 
deal  with;  some  by  the  sort  of  verse  they  liked  best  to 
write  in;  for  indeed  the  greatest  part  of  poets  have  appar- 
elled their  poetical  inventions  in  that  numerous  kind  of 
writing  which  is  called  verse.  Indeed  but  apparelled  verse, 
being  but  an  ornament,  and  no  cause  to  poetry,  since  there 
have  been  many  most  excellent  poets  that  never  versified, 
and  now  swarm  many  versifiers  that  need  never  answer 
to  the  name  of  poets.  For  Xenophon,  who  did  imitate 
so  excellently  as  to  give  us  "  effigiem  justi  imperii,"  the 
portraiture  of  a  just  empire,  under  the  name  of  Cyrus,  as 
Cicero  saith  of  him,  made  therein  an  absolute  heroical 
poem.  So  did  Heliodorus,  in  his  sugared  invention  of 
that  picture  of  love  in  "  Theagenes  and  Chariclea";  and 
yet  both  these  wrote  in  prose;  which  I  speak  to  show  that 
it  is  not  rhyming  and  versing  that  maketh  a  poet  (no  more 
than  a  long  gown  maketh  an  advocate,  who,  though  he 
pleaded  in  armour,  should  be  an  advocate  and  no  soldier); 
but  it  is  that,  feigning  notable  images  of  virtues,  vices,  or 
what  else,  with  that  delightful  teaching,  which  must  be 
the  right  describing  note  to  know  a  poet  by.  Although, 
indeed,  the  senate  of  poets  have  chosen  verse  as  their  fit- 
test raiment;  meaning,  as  in  matter  they  passed  all  in  all, 


58  SIDNEY 

so  in  manner  to  go  beyond  them;  not  speaking,  table-talk 
fashion,  or  like  men  in  a  dream,  words  as  they  chanceably 
fall  from  the  mouth,  but  piecing  each  syllable  of  each  word 
by  just  proportion,  according  to  the  dignity  of  the  subject. 
Now,  therefore,  it  shall  not  be  amiss,  first,  to  weigh 
this  latter  sort  of  poetry  by  his  works,  and  then  by  his 
parts;  and  if  in  neither  of  these  anatomies  he  be  commend- 
able, I  hope  we  shall  receive  a  more  favourable  sentence. 
This  purifying  of  wit,  this  enriching  of  memory,  enabling 
of  judgment,  and  enlarging  of  conceit,  which  commonly 
we  call  learning,  under  what  name  soever  it  come  forth, 
or  to  what  immediate  end  soever  it  be  directed;  the  final 
end  is,  to  lead  and  draw  us  to  as  high  a  perfection  as  our 
degenerate  souls,  made  worse  by  their  clay  lodgings,  can 
be  capable  of.  This,  according  to  the  inclination  of  man, 
bred  many  formed  impressions:  for  some  that  thought  this 
felicity  principally  to  be  gotten  by  knowledge,  and  no 
knowledge  to  be  so  high  or  heavenly  as  to  be  acquainted 
with  the  stars,  gave  themselves  to  astronomy;  others,  per- 
suading themselves  to  be  demi-gods  if  they  knew  the  causes 
of  things,  became  natural  and  supernatural  philosophers. 
Some  an  admirable  delight  drew  to  music;  and  some  the 
certainty  of  demonstrations  to  the  mathematics;  but  all, 
one  and  other,  having  this  scope,  to  know,  and  by  knowl- 
edge to  lift  up  the  mind  from  the  dungeon  of  the  body 
to  the  enjoying  his  own  divine  essence.  But  when,  by  the 
balance  of  experience,  it  was  found  that  the  astronomer, 
looking  to  the  stars,  might  fall  in  a  ditch;  that  the  inquir- 
ing philosopher  might  be  blind  in  himself;  and  the  mathe- 
matician might  draw  forth  a  straight  line  with  a  crooked 
heart;  then  To!  did  proof,  the  overruler  of  opinions,  make 
manifest  that  all  these  are  but  serving  sciences,  which,  as 
they  have  a  private  end  in  themselves,  so  yet  are  they 
all  directed  to  the  highest  end  of  the  mistress-knowledge, 
by  the  Greeks  called  apxireicroviKr),  which  stands,  as  I 
think,  in  the  knowledge  of  a  man's  self;  in  the  ethic  and 
politic  consideration,  with  the  end  of  well-doing,  and  not 
of  well-knowing  only:  even  as  the  saddler's  next  end  is 
to  make  a  good  saddle,  but  his  further  end  to  serve  a  nobler 
faculty,  which  is  horsemanship;  so  the  horseman's  to  sol- 
diery; and  the  soldier  not  only  to  have  the  skill,  but  to 


THE   DEFENCE   OF  POESY 


59 


perform  the  practice  of  a  soldier.  So  that  the  ending  end 
of  all  earthly  learning  being  virtuous  action,  those  skills 
that  most  serve  to  bring  forth  that  have  a  most  just  title 
to  be  princes  over  all  the  rest;  wherein,  if  we  can  show  it 
rightly,  the  poet  is  worthy  to  have  it  before  any  other  com- 
petitors. 

Among  whom  principally  to  challenge  it,  step  forth  the 
moral  philosophers;  whom,  methinks,  I  see  coming  toward 
me  with  a  sullen  gravity  (as  though  they  could  not  abide 
vice  by  daylight),  rudely  clothed,  for  to  witness  outwardly 
their  contempt  of  outward  things,  with  books  in  their  hands 
against  glory,  whereto  they  set  their  names;  sophistically 
speaking  against  subtlety,  and  angry  with  any  man  in 
whom  they  see  the  foul  fault  of  anger.  These  men,  cast- 
ing largesses  as  they  go,  of  definitions,  divisions,  and  dis- 
tinctions, with  a  scornful  interrogative  do  soberly  ask, 
Whether  it  be  possible  to  find  any  path  so  ready  to  lead 
a  man  to  virtue  as  that  which  teacheth  what  virtue  is; 
and  teacheth  it  not  only  by  delivering  forth  his  very  being, 
his  causes  and  effects;  but  also  by  making  known  his 
enemy,  vice,  which  must  be  destroyed,  and  his  cumber- 
some servant,  passion,  which  must  be  mastered;  by  show- 
ing the  generalities  that  contain  it,  and  the  specialities  that 
are  derived  from  it:  lastly,  by  plain  setting  down  how  it 
extends  itself  out  of  the  limits  of  a  man's  own  little  world, 
to  the  government  of  families,  and  maintaining  of  public 
societies? 

The  historian  scarcely  gives  leisure  to  the  moralist  to 
say  so  much,  but  that  he,  laden  with  old  mouse-eaten 
records,  authorizing  himself,  for  the  most  part,  upon  other 
histories,  whose  greatest  authorities  are  built  upon  the 
notable  foundation  of  hearsay;  having  much  ado  to  accord 
differing  writers,  and  to  pick  truth  out  of  partiality;  better 
acquainted  with  a  thousand  years  ago  than  with  the  pres- 
ent age,  and  yet  better  knowing  how  this  world  goes  than 
how  his  own  wit  runs;  curious  for  antiquities,  and  inquisi- 
tive of  novelties,  a  wonder  to  young  folks,  and  a  tyrant 
in  table-talk,  denieth,  in  a  great  chafe,  that  any  man  for 
teaching  of  virtue  and  virtuous  actions  is  comparable  to 
him.  I  am  "  testis  temporum,  lux  veritatis,  vita  memoriae, 
magistra  vitse,  nuncia  vetustatis."  The  philosopher,  saith 


60  SIDNEY 

he,  teacheth  a  disputative  virtue,  but  I  do  an  active;  his 
virtue  is  excellent  in  the  dangerless  academy  of  Plato,  but 
mine  showeth  forth  her  honourable  face  in  the  battles  of 
Marathon,  Pharsalia,  Poitiers,  and  Agincourt:  he  teach- 
eth virtue  by  certain  abstract  considerations;  but  I  only 
bid  you  follow  the  footing  of  them  that  have  gone  before 
you:  old-aged  experience  goeth  beyond  the  fine-witted 
philosopher;  but  I  give  the  experience  of  many  ages: 
lastly,  if  he  make  the  song-book,  I  put  the  learner's  hand 
to  the  lute;  and  if  he  be  the  guide,  I  am  the  light.  Then 
would  he  allege  you  innumerable  examples,  confirming 
story  by  stories,  how  much  the  wisest  senators  and  princes 
have  been  directed  by  the  credit  of  history,  as  Brutus,  Al- 
phonsus  of  Aragon  (and  who  not,  if  need  be?).  At  length, 
the  long  line  of  their  disputation  makes  a  point  in  this,  that 
the  one  giveth  the  precept,  and  the  other  the  example. 

Now  whom  shall  we  find,  since  the  question  standeth 
for  the  highest  form  in  the  school  of  learning,  to  be  mod- 
erator? Truly,  as  me  seemeth,  the  poet;  and  if  not  a 
moderator,  even  the  man  that  ought  to  carry  the  title  from 
them  both,  and  much  more  from  all  other  serving  sciences. 
Therefore  compare  we  the  poet  with  the  historian,  and 
with  the  moral  philosopher;  and  if  he  go  beyond  them 
both,  no  other  human  skill  can  match  him:  for  as  for  the 
divine,  with  all  reverence,  he  is  ever  to  be  excepted,  not 
only  for  having  his  scope  as  far  beyond  any  of  these,  as 
eternity  exceedeth  a  moment,  but  even  for  passing  each 
of  these  in  themselves:  and  for  the  lawyer,  though  "  Jus  " 
be  the  daughter  of  Justice,  the  chief  of  virtues,  yet  because 
he  seeks  to  make  men  good  rather  "  formidine  pcenae  " 
than  "  virtutis  amore,"  or,  to  say  righter,  doth  not  en- 
deavour to  make  men  good,  but  that  their  evil  hurt  not 
others,  having  no  care,  so  he  be  a  good  citizen,  how  bad 
a  man  he  be:  therefore,  as  our  wickedness  maketh  him 
necessary,  and  necessity  maketh  him  honourable,  so  is  he 
not  in  the  deepest  truth  to  stand  in  rank  with  these,  who 
all  endeavour  to  take  naughtiness  away,  and  plant  good- 
ness even  in  the  secretest  cabinet  of  our  souls.  And  these 
four  are  all  that  any  way  deal  in  the  consideration  of  men's 
manners,  which  being  the  supreme  knowledge,  they  that 
best  breed  it  deserve  the  best  commendation. 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  6r 

The  philosopher,  therefore,  and  the  historian  are  they 
which  would  win  the  goal,  the  one  by  precept,  the  other 
by  example;  but  both,  not  having  both,  do  both  halt.  For 
the  philosopher,  setting  down  with  thorny  arguments  the 
bare  rule,  is  so  hard  of  utterance,  and  so  misty  to  be  con- 
ceived, that  one  that  hath  no  other  guide  but  him  shall 
wade  in  him  until  he  be  old,  before  he  shall  find  sufficient 
cause  to  be  honest.  For  his  knowledge  standeth  so  upon 
the  abstract  and  general  that  happy  is  that  man  who  may 
understand  him,  and  more  happy  that  can  apply  what  he 
doth  understand.  On  the  other  side,  the  historian,  want- 
ing the  precept,  is  so  tied  not  to  what  should  be,  but  to 
what  is,  to  the  particular  truth  of  things,  and  not  to  the 
general  reason  of  things,  that  his  example  draweth  no  ne- 
cessary consequence,  and  therefore  a  less  fruitful  doctrine. 

Now  doth  the  peerless  poet  perform  both;  for  what- 
soever the  philosopher  saith  should  be  done,  he  giveth  a 
perfect  picture  of  it,  by  some  one  by  whom  he  presupposeth 
it  was  done,  so  as  he  coupleth  the  general  notion  with  the 
particular  example.  A  perfect  picture,  I  say;  for  he  yield- 
eth  to  the  powers  of  the  mind  an  image  of  that  whereof 
the  philosopher  bestoweth  but  a  wordish  description,  which 
doth  neither  strike,  pierce,  nor  possess  the  sight  of  the 
soul,  so  much  as  that  other  doth.  For  as,  in  outward 
things,  to  a  man  that  had  never  seen  an  elephant  or  a  rhi- 
noceros, who  should  tell  him  most  exquisitely  all  their 
shape,  colour,  bigness,  and  particular  marks;  or  of  a  gor- 
geous palace,  in  architecture,  who,  declaring  the  full  beau- 
ties, might  well  make  the  hearer  able  to  repeat,  as  it  were, 
by  rote,  all  he  had  heard,  yet  should  never  satisfy  his  inward 
conceit,  with  being  witness  to  itself  of  a  true  living  knowl- 
edge: but  the  same  man,  as  soon  as  he  might  see  those 
beasts  well  painted,  or  that  house  well  in  model,  should 
straightway  grow,  without  need  of  any  description,  to  a 
judicial  comprehending  of  them:  so,  no  doubt,  the  philoso- 
pher, with  his  learned  definitions,  be  it  of  virtues  or  vices, 
matters  of  public  policy  or  private  government,  replenish- 
eth  the  memory  with  many  infallible  grounds  of  wisdom, 
which,  notwithstanding,  lie  dark  before  the  imaginative  and 
judging  power,  if  they  be  not  illuminated  or  figured  forth 
by  the  speaking  picture  of  poesy. 


62  SIDNEY 

Tully  taketh  much  pains,  and  many  times  not  without 
poetical  helps,  to  make  us  know  the  force  love  of  our  coun- 
try hath  in  us.  Let  us  but  hear  old  Anchises,  speaking 
in  the  midst  of  Troy's  flames,  or  see  Ulysses,  in  the  fulness 
of  all  Calypso's  delights,  bewail  his  absence  from  barren 
and  beggarly  Ithaca.  Anger,  the  Stoics  said,  was  a  short 
madness;  let  but  Sophocles  bring  you  Ajax  on  a  stage, 
killing  or  whipping  sheep  and  oxen,  thinking  them  the 
army  of  Greeks,  with  their  chieftains  Agamemnon  and 
Menelaus;  and  tell  me  if  you  have  not  a  more  familiar  in- 
sight into  anger  than  finding  in  the  schoolmen  his  genius 
and  difference?  See  whether  wisdom  and  temperance  in 
Ulysses  and  Diomedes,  valour  in  Achilles,  friendship  in 
Nisus  and  Euryalus,  even  to  an  ignorant  man,  carry  not  an 
apparent  shining;  and  contrarily,  the  remorse  of  conscience 
in  CEdipus;  the  soon-repenting  pride  in  Agamemnon;  the 
self-devouring  cruelty  in  his  father  Atreus;  the  violence  of 
ambition  in  the  two  Theban  brothers;  the  sour  sweetness 
of  revenge  in  Medea;  and,  to  fall  lower,  the  Terentian 
Gnatho,  and  our  Chaucer's  Pandar,  so  expressed,  that  we 
now  use  their  names  to  signify  their  trades:  and,  finally,  all 
virtues,  vices,  and  passions  so  in  their  own  natural  states 
laid  to  the  view  that  we  seem  not  to  hear  of  themy  but 
clearly  to  see  through  them? 

But  even  in  the  most  excellent  determination  of  good- 
ness what  philosopher's  counsel  can  so  readily  direct  a 
prince  as  the  feigned  Cyrus  in  Xenophon?  Or  a  virtuous 
man  in  all  fortunes,  as  ^Eneas  in  Virgil?  Or  a  whole  com- 
monwealth, as  the  way  of  Sir  Thomas  M  ore's  "  Utopia  "? 
I  say  the  way,  because  where  Sir  Thomas  More  erred  it 
was  the  fault  of  the  man,  and  not  of  the  poet:  for  that 
way  of  patterning  a  commonwealth  was  most  absolute, 
though  he,  perchance,  hath  not  so  absolutely  performed 
it.  For  the  question  is,  whether  the  feigned  image  of 
poetry,  or  the  regular  instruction  of  philosophy,  hath  the 
more  force  in  teaching.  Wherein,  if  the  philosophers 
have  more  rightly  showed  themselves  philosophers 
than  the  poets  have  attained  to  the  high  top  of  their 
profession  (as  in  truth, 

"  Mediocribus  esse  poetis 
Non  Dii,  non  homines,  non  concessere  columnae  "), 


THE  DEFENCE  OF  POESY  63 

it  is,  I  say  again,  not  the  fault  of  the  art,  but  that  by  few 
men  that  art  can  be  accomplished.  Certainly  even  our 
Saviour  Christ  could  as  well  have  given  the  moral  common- 
places of  uncharitableness  and  humbleness  as  the  divine 
narration  of  Dives  and  Lazarus;  or  of  disobedience  and 
mercy  as  the  heavenly  discourse  of  the  lost  child  and  the 
gracious  father;  but  that  his  thorough  searching  wisdom 
knew  the  estate  of  Dives  burning  in  hell,  and  of  Lazarus 
in  Abraham's  bosom,  would  more  constantly,  as  it  were, 
inhabit  both  the  memory  and  judgment.  Truly,  for  myself 
(meseems),  I  see  before  mine  eyes  the  lost  child's  dis- 
dainful prodigality  turned  to  envy  a  swine's  dinner:  which, 
by  the  learned  divines,  are  thought  not  historical  acts,  but 
instructing  parables. 

For  conclusion,  I  say  the  philosopher  teacheth,  but 
he  teacheth  obscurely,  so  as  the  learned  only  can  under- 
stand him ;  that  is  to  say,  he  teacheth  them  that  are  already 
taught.  But  the  poet  is  the  food  for  the  tenderest  stom- 
achs; the  poet  is,  indeed,  the  right  popular  philosopher. 
Whereof  ^sop's  tales  give  good  proof;  whose  pretty  alle- 
gories, stealing  under  the  formal  tales  of  beasts,  make 
many,  more  beastly  than  beasts,  begin  to  hear  the  sound 
of  virtue  from  those  dumb  speakers. 

But  now  may  it  be  alleged  that  if  this  managing  of 
matters  be  so  fit  for  the  imagination,  then  must  the  his- 
torian needs  surpass,  who  brings  you  images  of  true  mat- 
ters, such  as,  indeed,  were  done,  and  not  such  as  fantas- 
tically or  falsely  may  be  suggested  to  have  been  done. 
Truly  Aristotle  himself,  in  his  "Discourse  of  Poesy," 
plainly  determineth  this  question,  saying  that  poetry  is 
<f>i\o(To<l>a)T€pov  ical  (TJrov^aioTepov — that  is  to  say,  it  is  more 
philosophical  and  more  ingenious  than  history.  His  reason 
is,  because  poesy  dealeth  with  Ka0o\0v,  that  is  to  say,  with  the 
universal  consideration,  and  the  history  na&  ereavrov,  the 
particular.  "  Now,"  saith  he,  "  the  universal  weighs  what 
is  fit  to  be  said  or  done,  either  in  likelihood  or  necessity; 
which  the  poesy  considereth  in  his  imposed  names:  and 
the  particular  only  marks  whether  Alcibiades  did  or  suf- 
fered this  or  that":  thus  far  Aristotle.  Which  reason  of 
his,  as  all  his,  is  most  full  of  reason.  For,  indeed,  if  the 
question  were,  whether  it  were  better  to  have  a  particular 


64  SIDNEY 

act  truly  or  falsely  set  down,  there  is  no  doubt  which  is  to 
be  chosen,  no  more  than  whether  you  had  rather  have 
Vespasian's  picture  right  as  he  was,  or,  at  the  painter's 
pleasure,  nothing  resembling.  But  if  the  question  be,  for 
your  own  use  and  learning,  whether  it  be  better  to  have 
it  set  down  as  it  should  be,  or  as  it  was,  then,  certainly,  is 
more  doctrinable  the  feigned  Cyrus  in  Xenophon  than  the 
true  Cyrus  in  Justin;  and  the  feigned  yEneas  in  Virgil  than 
the  right  ^neas  in  Dares  Phrygius:  as  to  a  lady  that  de- 
sired to  fashion  her  countenance  to  the  best  grace,  a  painter 
should  more  benefit  her,  to  portrait  a  most  sweet  face, 
writing  Canidia  upon  it,  than  to  paint  Canidia  as  she  was, 
who,  Horace  sweareth,  was  full  ill  favoured.  If  the  poet 
do  his  part  aright,  he  will  show  you  in  Tantalus,  Atreus, 
and  such  like,  nothing  that  is  not  to  be  shunned;  in  Cyrus, 
^Eneas,  Ulysses,  each  thing  to  be  followed:  where  the  his- 
torian, bound  to  tell  things  as  things  were,  can  not  be  lib- 
eral, without  he  will  be  poetical,  of  a  perfect  pattern;  but, 
as  in  Alexander,  or  Scipio  himself,  show  doings,  some  to 
be  liked,  some  to  be  misliked;  and  then  how  will  you  dis- 
cern what  to  follow,  but  by  your  own  discretion,  which 
you  had,  without  reading  Q.  Curtius?  And  whereas  a  man 
may  say,  though  in  universal  consideration  of  doctrine,  the 
poet  prevaileth,  yet  that  the  history,  in  his  saying  such  a 
thing  was  done,  doth  warrant  a  man  more  in  that  he  shall 
follow;  the  answer  is  manifest:  that  if  he  stand  upon  that 
was,  as  if  he  should  argue,  because  it  rained  yesterday 
therefore  it  should  rain  to-day;  then,  indeed,  hath  it  some 
advantage  to  a  gross  conceit.  But  if  he  know  an  example 
only  enforms  a  conjectured  likelihood,  and  so  go  by  reason, 
the  poet  doth  so  far  exceed  him,  as  he  is  to  frame  his 
example  to  that  which  is  most  reasonable,  be  it  in  warlike, 
politic,  or  private  matters;  where  the  historian  in  his  bare 
was  hath  many  times  that  which  we  call  fortune  to  over- 
rule the  best  wisdom.  Many  times  he  must  tell  events 
whereof  he  can  yield  no  cause;  or  if  he  do,  it  must  be 
poetically. 

For  that  a  feigned  example  hath  as  much  force  to  teach 
as  a  true  example  (for  as  for  to  move,  it  is  clear,  since  the 
feigned  may  be  tuned  to  the  highest  key  of  passion),  let 
us  take  one  example  wherein  a  historian  and  a  poet  did 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  65 

concur.  Herodotus  and  Justin  do  both  testify  that  Zopy- 
rus,  King  Darius's  faithful  servant,  seeing  his  master  long 
resisted  by  the  rebellious  Babylonians,  feigned  himself  in 
extreme  disgrace  of  his  king;  for  verifying  of  which,  he 
caused  his  own  nose  and  ears  to  be  cut  off,  and  so  flying 
to  the  Babylonians,  was  received;  and,  for  his  known  val- 
our, so  far  credited,  that  he  did  find  means  to  deliver  them 
over  to  Darius.  Much-like  matters  doth  Livy  record  of 
Tarquinius  and  his  son.  Xenophon  excellently  feigned 
such  another  stratagem,  performed  by  Abradates  in  Cyrus's 
behalf.  Now  would  I  fain  know,  if  occasion  be  presented 
unto  you,  to  serve  your  prince  by  such  an  honest  dissimu- 
lation, why  do  you  not  as  well  learn  it  of  Xenophon's  fic- 
tion as  of  the  others'  verity?  and,  truly,  so  much  the  better, 
as  you  shall  save  your  nose  by  the  bargain;  for  Abradates 
did  not  counterfeit  so  far.  So,  then,  the  best  of  the  his- 
torians is  subject  to  the  poet;  for,  whatsoever  action  or  fac- 
tion, whatsoever  counsel,  policy,  or  war  stratagem  the  his- 
torian is  bound  to  recite,  that  may  the  poet,  if  he  list,  with 
his  imitation,  make  his  own,  beautifying  it  both  for  further 
teaching  and  more  delighting,  as  it  please  him;  having 
all,  from  Dante's  heaven  to  his  hell,  under  the  authority 
of  his  pen.  Which  if  I  be  asked,  What  poets  have  done 
so?  as  I  might  well  name  some,  so  yet,  say  I,  and  say 
again,  I  speak  of  the  art,  and  not  of  the  artificer. 

Now,  to  that  which  commonly  is  attributed  to  the  praise 
of  history,  in  respect  of  the  notable  learning  which  is  got 
by  marking  the  success,  as  though  therein  a  man  should 
see  virtue  exalted  and  vice  punished:  truly,  that  com- 
mendation is  peculiar  to  poetry,  and  far  off  from  history; 
for,  indeed,  poetry  ever  sets  virtue  so  out  in  her  best 
colours  making  fortune  her  well-waiting  handmaid  that 
one  must  needs  be  enamoured  of  her.  Well  may  you 
see  Ulysses  in  a  storm,  and  in  other  hard  plights;  but 
they  are  but  exercises  of  patience  and  magnanimity,  to 
make  them  shine  the  more  in  the  near  following  pros- 
perity. And,  on  the  contrary  part,  if  evil  men  come  to  the 
stage,  they  ever  go  out  (as  the  tragedy  writer  answered 
to  one  that  misliked  the  show  of  such  persons)  so  man- 
acled, as  they  little  animate  folks  to  follow  them.  But 
history  being  captived  to  the  truth  of  a  foolish  world,  is 


66  SIDNEY 

many  times  a  terror  from  well-doing,  and  an  encourage- 
ment to  unbridled  wickedness.  For  see  we  not  valiant 
Miltiades  rot  in  his  fetters?  The  just  Phocion  and  the 
accomplished  Socrates  put  to  death  like  traitors?  The 
cruel  Severus  live  prosperously?  The  excellent  Severus 
miserably  murdered?  Sylla  and  Marius  dying  in  their 
beds?  Pompey  and  Cicero  slain  then  when  they  would 
have  thought  exile  a  happiness?  See  we  not  virtuous  Cato 
driven  to  kill  himself,  and  rebel  Caesar  so  advanced  that  his 
name  yet,  after  sixteen  hundred  years,  lasteth  in  the  high- 
est honour?  And  mark  but  even  Caesar's  own  words  of 
the  forenamed  Sylla  (who  in  that  only  did  honestly  to  put 
down  his  dishonest  tyranny),  "  literas  nescivit  ":  as  if  want 
o£  learning  caused  him  to  do  well.  He  meant  it  not  by 
poetry,  which,  not  content  with  earthly  plagues,  deviseth 
new  punishments  in  hell  for  tyrants:  nor  yet  by  philoso- 
phy, which  teacheth  "  occidentes  esse":  but,  no  doubt, 
by  skill  in  history;  for  that,  indeed,  can  afford  you  Cyp- 
selus,  Periander,  Phalaris,  Dionysius,  and  I  know  not  how 
many  more  of  the  same  kennel,  that  sped  well  enough  in 
their  abominable  injustice  of  usurpation. 

I  conclude,  therefore,  that  he  excelleth  history  not  only 
in  furnishing  the  mind  with  knowledge,  but  in  setting  it 
forward  to  that  which  deserves  to  be  called  and  accounted 
good:  which  setting  forward,  and  moving  to  well-doing, 
indeed,  setteth  the  laurel  crown  upon  the  poets  as  victori- 
ous, not  only  of  the  historian,  but  over  the  philosopher, 
howsoever,  in  teaching,  it  may  be  questionable.  For  sup- 
pose it  be  granted  that  which  I  suppose,  with  great  reason, 
may  be  denied,  that  the  philosopher,  in  respect  of  his  me- 
thodical proceeding,  teach  more  perfectly  than  the  poet, 
yet  do  I  think  that  no  man  is  so  much  <^Xo</>£X6<ro<£o5  as  to 
compare  the  philosopher  in  moving  with  the  poet.  And 
that  moving  is  of  a  higher  degree  than  teaching,  it  may 
by  this  appear,  that  it  is  well-nigh  both  the  cause  and  effect 
of  teaching;  for  who  will  be  taught  if  he  be  not  moved 
with  desire  to  be  taught?  And  what  so  much  good  doth 
that  teaching  bring  forth  (I  speak  still  of  moral  doctrine) 
as  that  it  moveth  one  to  do  that  which  it  doth  teach?  For 
as  Aristotle  saith,  it  is  not  yvaxw  but  Trpa&s  must  be  the 
fruit:  and  how  Trpafys  can  be,  without  being  moved  to 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY 


67 


practise,  it  is  no  hard  matter  to  consider.  The  philosopher 
showeth  you  the  way,  he  informeth  you  of  the  particu- 
larities, as  well  of  the  tediousness  of  the  way  and  of  the 
pleasant  lodging  you  shall  have  when  your  journey  is 
ended,  as  of  the  many  by-turnings  that  may  divert  you 
from  your  way;  but  this  is  to  no  man  but  to  him  that  will 
read  him,  and  read  him  with  attentive,  studious  painful- 
ness;  which  constant  desire  whosoever  hath  in  him  hath 
already  passed  half  the  hardness  of  the  way,  and  therefore 
is  beholden  to  the  philosopher  but  for  the  other  half.  Nay, 
truly,  learned  men  have  learnedly  thought  that  where  once 
reason  hath  so  much  overmastered  passion  as  that  the  mind 
hath  a  free  desire  to  do  well,  the  inward  light  each  mind 
hath  in  itself  is  as  good  as  a  philosopher's  book:  since  in 
Nature  we  know  it  is  well  to  do  well,  and  what  is  well 
and  what  is  evil,  although  not  in  the  words  of  art  which 
philosophers  bestow  upon  us;  for  out  of  natural  conceit  the 
philosophers  drew  it:  but  to  be  moved  to  do  that  which 
we  know,  or  to  be  moved  with  desire  to  know,  "  hoc  opus, 
hie  labor  est." 

Now,  therein,  of  all  sciences  (I  speak  still  of  human, 
and  according  to  the  human  conceit)  is  our  poet  the  mon- 
arch. For  he  doth  not  only  show  the  way,  but  giveth 
so  sweet  a  prospect  into  the  way  as  will  entice  any  man 
to  enter  into  it:  nay,  he  doth,  as  if  your  journey  should 
lie  through  a  fair  vineyard,  at  the  very  first  give  you  a 
cluster  of  grapes,  that  full  of  that  taste  you  may  long  to 
pass  further.  He  beginneth  not  with  obscure  definitions, 
which  must  blur  the  margin  with  interpretations,  and  load 
the  memory  with  doubtfulness,  but  he  cometh  to  you  with 
words  set  in  delightful  proportion,  either  accompanied  with 
or  prepared  for  the  well-enchanting  skill  of  music;  and 
with  a  tale,  forsooth,  he  cometh  unto  you,  with  a  tale  which 
holdeth  children  from  play  and  old  men  from  the  chimney- 
corner;  2  and,  pretending  no  more,  doth  intend  the  win- 
ning of  the  mind  from  wickedness  to  virtue;  even  as  the 
child  is  often  brought'  to  take  most  wholesome  things,  by 
hiding  them  in  such  other  as  have  a  pleasant  taste:  which, 
if  one  should  begin  to  tell  them  the  nature  of  the  aloes  or 
rhubarbarum  they  should  receive,  would  sooner  take  their 
physic  at  their  ears  than  at  their  mouth:  so  is  it  in  men 


68  SIDNEY 

(most  of  whom  are  childish  in  the  best  things,  till  they 
be  cradled  in  their  graves);  glad  they  will  be  to  hear  the 
tales  of  Hercules,  Achilles,  Cyrus,  yEneas;  and  hearing 
them,  must  needs  hear  the  right  description  of  wisdom, 
valour,  and  justice;  which,  if  they  had  been  barely  (that  is 
to  say,  philosophically)  set  out,  they  would  swear  they 
be  brought  to  school  again.  That  imitation  whereof  poetry 
is  hath  the  most  conveniency  to  Nature  of  all  other: 
insomuch  that,  as  Aristotle  saith,  those  things  which  in 
themselves  are  horrible,  as  cruel  battles,  unnatural  mon- 
sters, are  made,  in  poetical  imitation,  delightful.  Truly, 
I  have  known  men  that  even  with  reading  Amadis  de  Gaul, 
which,  God  knoweth,  wanteth  much  of  a  perfect  poesy, 
have  found  their  hearts  moved  to  the  exercise  of  courtesy, 
liberality,  and  especially  courage.  Who  readeth  yEneas 
carrying  old  Anchises  on  his  back,  that  wisheth  not  it  were 
his  fortune  to  perform  so  excellent  an  act?  Whom  doth 
not  those  words  of  Turnus  move  (the  tale  of  Turnus  hav- 
ing planted  his  image  in  the  imagination) : 

"  fugientem  haec  terra  videbit? 

Usque  adeone  mori  miserum  est?  "    (Virgil.) 

Where  the  philosophers  (as  they  think)  scorn  to  delight, 
so  much  they  be  content  little  to  move,  saving  wrangling 
whether  "  virtus  "  be  the  chief  or  the  only  good;  whether 
the  contemplative  or  the  active  life  do  excel:  which  Plato 
and  Boethius  well  knew;  and  therefore  made  Mistress  Phi- 
losophy very  often  borrow  the  masking  raiment  of  poesy. 
For  even  those  hard-hearted  evil  men,  who  think  virtue 
a  school  name,  and  know  no  other  good  but  "  indulgere 
genio,"  and  therefore  despise  the  austere  admonitions  of 
the  philosopher,  and  feel  not  the  inward  reason  they  stand 
upon;  yet  will  be  content  to  be  delighted,  which  is  all  the 
good-fellow  poet  seems  to  promise;  and  so  steal  to  see 
the  form  of  goodness,  which  seen,  they  can  not  but  love, 
ere  themselves  be  aware,  as  if  they  took  a  medicine  of 
cherries. 

Infinite  proofs  of  the  strange  effects  of  this  poetical 
invention  might  be  alleged;  only  two  shall  serve,  which 
are  so  often  remembered  as,  I  think,  all  men  know  them. 
The  one  of  Menenius  Agrippa,  who,  when  the  whole  peo- 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  69 

pie  of  Rome  had  resolutely  divided  themselves  for  the 
Senate,  with  apparent  show  of  utter  ruin,  though  he  were, 
for  that  time,  an  excellent  orator,  came  not  among  them 
upon  trust  either  of  figurative  speeches  or  cunning  insinu- 
ations, and  much  less  with  far-fetched  maxims  of  philoso- 
phy, which,  especially  if  they  were  Platonic,  they  must 
have  learned  geometry  before  they  could  have  conceived: 
but,  forsooth,  he  behaveth  himself  like  a  homely  and  famil- 
iar poet.  He  telleth  them  a  tale  that  there  was  a  time 
when  all  the  parts  of  the  body  made  a  mutinous  conspiracy 
against  the  belly,  which  they  thought  devoured  the  fruits 
of  each  other's  labour:  they  concluded  they  would  let  so 
unprofitable  a  spender  starve.  In  the  end,  to  be  short  (for 
the  tale  is  notorious,  and  as  notorious  that  it  was  a  tale), 
with  punishing  the  belly  they  plagued  themselves.  This, 
applied  by  him,  Wi  ought  such  effect  in  the  people  as  I 
never  read  that  only  words  brought  forth;  but  then  so 
sudden,  and  so  good  an  alteration,  for  upon  reasonable  con- 
ditions a  perfect  reconcilement  ensued. 

The  other  is  of  Nathan  the  prophet,  who,  when  the  holy 
David  had  so  far  forsaken  God  as  to  confirm  adultery  with 
murder,  when  he  was  to  do  the  tenderest  office  of  a  friend, 
in  laying  his  own  shame  before  his  eyes,  being  sent  by 
God  to  call  again  so  chosen  a  servant,  how  doth  he  it  but 
by  telling  of  a  man  whose  beloved  lamb  was  ungratefully 
taken  from  his  bosom?  The  application  most  divinely 
true,  but  the  discourse  itself  feigned;  which  made  David 
(I  speak  of  the  second  and  instrumental  cause)  as  in  a  glass 
see  his  own  filthiness,  as  that  heavenly  psalm  of  mercy 
well  testifieth. 

By  these,  therefore,  examples  and  reasons,  I  think  it 
may  be  manifest  that  the  poet,  with  that  same  hand  of 
delight,  doth  draw  the  mind  more  effectually  than  any 
other  art  doth.  And  so  a  conclusion  not  unfitly  ensues; 
that  as  virtue  is  the  most  excellent  resting  place  for  all 
worldly  learning  to  make  his  end  of,  so  poetry,  being  the 
most  familiar  to  teach  it,  and  most  princely  to  move  to- 
ward it,  in  the  most  excellent  work  is  the  most  excellent 
workman. 

But  I  am  content  not  only  to  decipher  him  by  his  works 
(although  works  in  commendation  and  dispraise  must  ever 
5 


70  SIDNEY 

hold  a  high  authority),  but  more  narrowly  will  examine  his 
parts;  so  that  (as  in  a  man)  though  all  together  may  carry 
a  presence  full  of  majesty  and  beauty,  perchance  in  some 
one  defectuous  piece  we  may  find  blemish. 

Now,  in  his  parts,  kinds,  or  species,  as  you  list  to  term 
them,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  some  poesies  have  coupled 
together  two  or  three  kinds;  as  the  tragical  and  comical, 
whereupon  is  risen  the  tragi-comical ;  some,  in  the  manner, 
have  mingled  prose  and  verse,  as  Sannazzaro  and  Boethius; 
some  have  mingled  matters  heroical  and  pastoral;  but  that 
cometh  all  to  one  in  this  question;  for,  if  severed  they  be 
good,  the  conjunction  can  not  be  hurtful.  Therefore,  per- 
chance, forgetting  some,  and  leaving  some  as  needless  to 
be  remembered,  it  shall  not  be  amiss,  in  a  word,  to  cite 
the  special  kinds,  to  see  what  faults  may  be  found  in  the 
right  use  of  them. 

Is  it  then  the  pastoral  poem  which  is  misliked?  (For, 
perchance,  where  the  hedge  is  lowest  they  will  soonest 
leap  over.)  Is  the  poor  pipe  disdained  which  sometimes, 
out  of  Maelibeus's  mouth,  can  show  the  misery  of  people 
under  hard  lords  and  ravening  soldiers?  and  again,  by 
Tityrus,  what  blessedness  is  derived  to  them  that  lie  low- 
est from  the  goodness  of  them  that  sit  highest;  sometimes 
under  the  pretty  tales  of  wolves  and  sheep  can  include 
the  whole  considerations  of  wrong-doing  and  patience; 
sometimes  show  that  contentions  for  trifles  can  get  but  a 
trifling  victory;  where,  perchance,  a  man  may  see,  that 
even  Alexander  and  Darius,  when  they  strove  who  should 
be  cock  of  this  world's  dunghill,  the  benefit  they  got  was, 
that  the  after-livers  may  say : 

"  Haec  memini  et  victum  frustra  contendere  Thyrsim; 
Ex  illo  Corydon,  Corydon  est  tempore  nobis."    (Virgil.) 

Or  is  it  the  lamenting  elegiac,  which,  in  a  kind  heart, 
would  move  rather  pity  than  blame;  who  bewaileth,  with 
the  great  philosopher  Heraclitus,  the  weakness  of  man- 
kind and  the  wretchedness  of  the  world;  who,  surely,  is  to 
be  praised,  either  for  compassionately  accompanying  just 
causes  of  lamentations  or  for  rightly  painting  out  how  weak 
be  the  passions  of  woefulness? 

Is  it  the  bitter  but  wholesome  iambic,  who  rubs  the 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  7! 

galled  mind,  making  shame  the  trumpet  of  villainy,  with 
bold  and  open  crying  out  against  naughtiness? 
Or  the  satiric?  who, 

"  Omne  vafer  vitium  ridenti  tangit  amico  "; 

who  sportingly  never  leaveth,  until  he  make  a  man  laugh 
at  folly,  and,  at  length,  ashamed  to  laugh  at  himself,  which 
he  can  not  avoid  without  avoiding  the  folly;  who,  while 
"circum  praecordia  ludit,"  giveth  us  to  feel  how  many 
headaches  a  passionate  life  bringeth  us  to;  who  when  all 
is  done, 

"  Est  Ulubris,  animus  si  nos  non  deficit  aequus." 

No,  perchance  it  is  the  comic;  whom  naughty  play- 
makers  and  stage-keepers  have  justly  made  odious.  To 
the  arguments  of  abuse  I  will  after  answer;  only  thus  much 
now  is  to  be  said  that  the  comedy  is  an  imitation  of  the 
common  errors  of  our  life,  which  he  represented  in  the 
most  ridiculous  and  scornful  sort  that  may  be;  so  as  it  is 
impossible  that  any  beholder  can  be  content  to  be  such 
a  one.  Now,  as  in  geometry,  the  oblique  must  be  known 
as  well  as  the  right,  and  in  arithmetic  the  odd  as  well 
as  the  even;  so  in  the  actions  of  our  life,  who  seeth  not 
the  filthiness  of  evil,  wanteth  a  great  foil  to  perceive  the 
beauty  of  virtue.  This  doth  the  comedy  handle  so,  in  our 
private  and  domestical  matters,  as,  with  hearing  it,  we  get, 
as  it  were,  an  experience  of  what  is  to  be  looked  for,  of 
a  niggardly  Demea,  of  a  crafty  Davus,  of  a  flattering 
Gnatho,  of  a  vainglorious  Thraso;  and  not  only  to  know 
what  effects  are  to  be  expected,  but  to  know  who  be  such, 
by  the  signifying  badge  given  them  by  the  comedian.  And 
little  reason  hath  any  man  to  say  that  men  learn  the  evil 
by  seeing  it  so  set  out;  since,  as  I  said  before,  there  is  no 
man  living,  but  by  the  force  truth  hath  in  Nature,  no 
sooner  seeth  these  men  play  their  parts,  but  wisheth  them 
in  "  pistrinum  " ;  although  perchance  the  sack  of  his  own 
faults  lie  so  behind  his  back  that  he  seeth  not  himself  to 
dance  the  same  measure,  whereto  yet  nothing  can  more 
open  his  eyes  than  to  see  his  own  actions  contemptibly  set 
forth,  so  that  the  right  use  of  comedy  will,  I  think,  by  no- 
body be  blamed. 

And  much  less  of  the  high  arid  excellent  tragedy  that 


72  SIDNEY 

openeth  the  greatest  wounds,  and  showeth  forth  the  ulcers 
that  are  covered  with  tissue;  that  maketh  kings  fear  to  be 
tyrants,  and  tyrants  to  manifest  their  tyrannical  humours; 
that  with  stirring  the  effects  of  admiration  and  commisera- 
tion teacheth  the  uncertainty  of  this  world,  and  upon  how 
weak  foundations  gilded  roofs  are  builded:  that  maketh  us 
know,  "  qui  sceptra  saevus  duro  imperio  regit,  timet  timen- 
tes,  metus  in  authorem  redit."  But  how  much  it  can 
move,  Plutarch  yieldeth  a  notable  testimony  of  the  abomi- 
nable tyrant  Alexander  Pheraeus;  from  whose  eyes  a 
tragedy,  well  made  and  represented,  drew  abundance  of 
tears,  who  without  all  pity  had  murdered  infinite  numbers, 
and  some  of  his  own  blood;  so  as  he  that  was  not  ashamed 
to  make  matters  for  tragedies,  yet  could  not  resist  the 
sweet  violence  of  a  tragedy.  And  if  it  wrought  no  further 
good  in  him,  it  was  that  he,  in  despite  of  himself,  with- 
drew himself  from  hearkening  to  that  which  might  mollify 
his  hardened  heart.  But  it  is  not  the  tragedy  they  do  mis- 
like,  for  it  were  too  absurd  to  cast  out  so  excellent  a  repre- 
sentation of  whatsoever  is  most  worthy  to  be  learned. 

Is  it  the  lyric  that  most  displeaseth,  who  with  his  tuned 
lyre  and  well-accorded  voice  giveth  praise,  the  reward  of 
virtue,  to  virtuous  acts;  who  giveth  moral  precepts  and 
natural  problems;  who  sometimes  raiseth  up  his  voice  to 
the  height  of  the  heavens,  in  singing  the  lauds  of  the  im- 
mortal God?  Certainly  I  must  confess  mine  own  barba- 
rousness;  I  never  heard  the  old  song  of  "  Percy  and  Doug- 
las "  3  that  I  found  not  my  heart  moved  more  than  with 
a  trumpet;  and  yet  it  is  sung  but  by  some  blind  crowder, 
with  no  rougher  voice  than  rude  style;  which  being  so 
evil  apparelled  in  the  dust  and  cobweb  of  that  uncivil  age, 
what  would  it  work,  trimmed  in  the  gorgeous  eloquence 
of  Pindar?  In  Hungary  I  have  seen  it  the  manner  at  all 
feasts,  and  all  other  such-like  meetings,  to  have  songs  of 
their  ancestors'  valour,  which  that  right  soldier-like  nation 
think  one  of  the  chiefest  kindlers  of  brave  courage.  The 
incomparable  Lacedaemonians  did  not  only  carry  that  kind 
of  music  ever  with  them  to  the  field,  but  even  at  home, 
as  such  songs  were  made,  so  were  they  all  content  to  be 
singers  of  them;  when  the  lusty  men  were  to  tell  what 
they  did,  the  old  men  what  they  had  done,  and  the  young 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY 


73 


what  they  would  do.  And  where  a  man  may  say  that 
Pindar  many  times  praiseth  highly  victories  of  small  mo- 
ment, rather  matters  of  sport  than  virtue;  as  it  may  be 
answered,  it  was  the  fault  of  the  poet,  and  not  of  the  poetry; 
so,  indeed,  the  chief  fault  was  in  the  time  and  custom  of 
the  Greeks,  who  set  those  toys  at  so  high  a  price  that 
Philip  of  Macedon  reckoned  a  horse-race  won  at  Olympus 
among  his  three  fearful  felicities.  But  as  the  inimitable 
Pindar  often  did,  so  is  that  kind  most  capable,  and  most 
fit,  to  awake  the  thoughts  from  the  sleep  of  idleness,  to 
embrace  honourable  enterprises. 

There  rests  the  heroical,  whose  very  name,  I  think, 
should  daunt  all  backbiters.  For  by  what  conceit  can  a 
tongue  be  directed  to  speak  evil  of  that  which  draweth  with 
him  no  less  champions  than  Achilles,  Cyrus,  vEneas,  Tur- 
nus,  Tydeus,  Rinaldo?  who  doth  not  only  teach  and  move 
to  truth,  but  teacheth  and  moveth  to  the  most  high  and 
excellent  truth;  who  maketh  magnanimity  and  justice  shine 
through  all  misty  fearfulness  and  foggy  desires;  who,  if  the 
saying  of  Plato  and  Tully  be  true,  that  who  could  see 
Virtue,  would  be  wonderfully  ravished  with  the  love  of  her 
beauty;  this  man  setteth  her  out  to  make  her  more  lovely, 
in  her  holiday  apparel,  to  the  eye  of  any  that  will  deign  not 
to  disdain  until  they  understand.  But  if  anything  be  al- 
ready said  in  the  defence  of  sweet  poetry,  all  concurreth  to 
the  maintaining  the  heroical,  which  is  not  only  a  kind,  but 
the  best  and  most  accomplished  kind  of  poetry'.  For,  as 
the  image  of  each  action  stirreth  and  instructeth  the  mind, 
so  the  lofty  image  of  such  worthies  most  inflameth  the  mind 
with  desire  to  be  worthy,  and  informs  with  counsel  how  to 
be  worthy.  Only  let  ^Eneas  be  worn  in  the  tablet  of  your 
memory — how  he  governeth  himself  in  the  ruin  of  his  coun- 
try; in  the  preserving  his  old  father,  and  carrying  away  his 
religious  ceremonies;  in  obeying  God's  commandments,  to 
leave  Dido,  though  not  only  all  passionate  kindness,  but 
even  the  human  consideration  of  virtuous  gratefulness, 
would  have  craved  other  of  him;  how  in  storms,  how  in 
sports,  how  in  war,  how  in  peace,  how  a  fugitive,  how 
victorious,  how  besieged,  how  besieging,  how  to  stran- 
gers, how  to  allies,  how  to  enemies,  how  to  his  own;  lastly, 
how  in  his  inward  self,  and  how  in  his  outward  gov- 


74 


SIDNEY 


ernment;  and  I  think,  in  a  mind  most  prejudiced  with  a 
prejudicating  humour,  he  will  be  found  in  excellency  fruit- 
ful. Yea,  as  Horace  saith,  "  melius  Chrysippo  et  Cran- 
tore."  But,  truly,  I  imagine  it  falleth  out  with  these  poet- 
whippers  as  with  some  good  women  who  often  are  sick,  but 
in  faith  they  can  not  tell  where.  So  the  name  of  poetry  is 
odious  to  them,  but  neither  his  cause  nor  effects,  neither  the 
sum  that  contains  him,  nor  the  particularities  descending 
from  him,  give  any  fast  handle  to  their  carping  dispraise. 

Since,  then,  poetry  is  of  all  human  learnings  the  most 
ancient,  and  of  most  fatherly  antiquity,  as  from  whence 
other  learnings  have  taken  their  beginnings;  since  it  is  so 
universal  that  no  learned  nation  doth  despise  it,  nor  bar- 
barous nation  is  without  it;  since  both  Roman  and  Greek 
gave  such  divine  names  unto  it,  the  one  of  "  prophesying," 
the  other  of  "making,"  and  that  indeed  that  name  of  "mak- 
ing "  is  fit  for  him,  considering,  that  where  all  other  arts 
retain  themselves  within  their  subject,  and  receive,  as  it 
were,  their  being  from  it,  the  poet  only,  only  bringeth  his 
own  stuff,  and  doth  not  learn  a  conceit  out  of  a  matter, 
but  maketh  matter  for  a  conceit;  since  neither  his  descrip- 
tion nor  end  containeth  any  evil,  the  thing  described  can 
not  be  evil;  since  his  effects  be  so  good  as  to  teach  good- 
ness, and  delight  the  learners  of  it;  since  therein  (namely, 
in  moral  doctrine,  the  chief  of  all  knowledges)  he  doth  not 
only  far  pass  the  historian,  but,  for  instructing,  is  well-nigh 
comparable  to  the  philosopher,  for  moving,  leaveth  him 
behind  him;  since  the  holy  scripture  (wherein  there  is  no 
uncleanliness)  hath  whole  parts  in  it  poetical,  and  that  even 
our  Saviour  Christ  vouchsafed  to  use  the  flowers  of  it; 
since  all  his  kinds  are  not  only  in  their  united  forms,  but 
in  their  several  dissections  fully  commendable:  I  think,  and 
think  I  think  rightly,  the  laurel  crown  appointed  for  trium- 
phant captains,  doth  worthily,  of  all  other  learnings,  honour 
the  poet's  triumph. 

But  because  we  have  ears  as  well  as  tongues,  and  that 
the  lightest  reasons  that  may  be  will  seem  to  weigh  greatly 
if  nothing  be  put  in  the  counter-balance,  let  us  hear,  and, 
as  well  as  we  can,  ponder  what  objections  be  made  against 
this  art,  which  may  be  worthy  either  of  yielding  or  an- 
swering. 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  ^ 

First,  truly,  I  note,  not  only  in  these  fuo-opovo-oi,  poet- 
haters,  but  in  all  that  kind  of  people  who  seek  a  praise  by 
dispraising  others,  that  they  do  prodigally  spend  a  great 
many  wandering  words  in  quips  and  scoffs,  carping  and 
taunting  at  each  thing,  which,  by  stirring  the  spleen,  may 
stay  the  brain  from  a  thorough  beholding  the  worthiness 
of  the  subject.  Those  kind  of  objections,  as  they  are  full 
of  a  very  idle  easiness  (since  there  is  nothing  of  so  sacred 
a  majesty,  but  that  an  itching  tongue  may  rub  itself  upon 
it),  so  deserve  they  no  other  answer,  but,  instead  of  laugh- 
ing at  the  jest,  to  laugh  at  the  jester.  We  know  a  playing 
wit  can  praise  the  discretion  of  an  ass,  the  comfortableness 
of  being  in  debt,  and  the  jolly  commodities  of  being  sick 
of  the  plague;  so,  of  the  contrary  side,  if  we  will  turn 
Ovid's  verse: 

"  Ut  lateat  virtus  proximitate  mali," 

"  that  good  lies  hid  in  nearness  of  the  evil/'  Agrippa  will 
be  as  merry  in  the  showing  the  vanity  of  science,  as  Eras- 
mus was  in  the  commending  of  folly;  neither  shall  any  man 
or  matter  escape  some  touch  of  these  smiling  railers.  But 
for  Erasmus  and  Agrippa,  they  had  another  foundation  than 
the  superficial  part  would  promise.  Marry,  these  other 
pleasant  fault-finders,  who  will  correct  the  verb  before  they 
understand  the  noun,  and  confute  others'  knowledge  be- 
fore they  confirm  their  own;  I  would  have  them  only  re- 
member that  scofring  cometh  not  of  wisdom;  so  as  the 
best  title  in  true  English  they  get  with  their  merriments 
is  to  be  called  good  fools,  for  so  have  our  grave  forefathers 
ever  termed  that  humorous  kind  of  jesters. 

But  that  which  giveth  greatest  scope  to  their  scorning 
humour  is  rhyming  and  versing.  It  is  already  said,  and, 
as  I  think,  truly  said,  it  is  not  rhyming  and  versing  that 
maketh  poesy;  one  may  be  a  poet  without  versing,  and  a 
versifier  without  poetry.  But  yet,  presuppose  it  were  in- 
separable, as,  indeed,  it  seemeth  Scaliger  judgeth  truly,  it 
were  an  inseparable  commendation :  for  if  "  oratio  "  next 
to  "  ratio,"  speech  next  to  reason,  be  the  greatest  gift  be- 
stowed upon  mortality,  that  can  not  be  praiseless  which 
doth  most  polish  that  blessing  of  speech;  which  considereth 
each  word,  not  only  as  a  man  may  say  by  his  forcible 
quality,  but  by  his  best  measured  quantity;  carrying  even  in 


76  SIDNEY 

themselves  a  harmony;  without,  perchance,  number,  meas- 
ure, order,  proportion  be  in  our  time  grown  odious. 

But  lay  aside  the  just  praise  it  hath,  by  being  the  only 
fit  speech  for  music — music,  I  say,  the  most  divine  striker 
of  the  senses;  thus  much  is  undoubtedly  true,  that  if  read- 
ing be  foolish  without  remembering,  memory  being  the 
only  treasure  of  knowledge,  those  words  which  are  fittest 
for  memory  are  likewise  most  convenient  for  knowledge. 
Now  that  verse  far  exceedeth  prose  in  the  knitting  up  of 
the  memory,  the  reason  is  manifest:  the  words,  besides 
their  delight,  which  hath  a  great  affinity  to  memory,  being 
so  set  as  one  can  not  be  lost  but  the  whole  work  fails; 
which,  accusing  itself,  calleth  the  remembrance  back  to  it- 
self, and  so  most  strongly  confirmeth  it.  Besides,  one 
word  so,  as  it  were,  begetting  another,  as,  be  it  in  rhyme  or 
measured  verse,  by  the  former  a  man  shall  have  a  near 
guess  to  the  follower.  Lastly,  even  they  that  have  taught 
the  art  of  memory,  have  showed  nothing  so  apt  for  it  as 
a  certain  room  divided  into  many  places,  well  and  thor- 
oughly known;  now  that  hath  the  verse  in  effect  per- 
fectly, every  word  having  his  natural  seat,  which  seat  must 
needs  make  the  word  remembered.  But  what  needs  more 
in  a  thing  so  known  to  all  men?  Who  is  it,  that  ever 
was  a  scholar,  that  doth  not  carry  away  some  verses  of 
Virgil,  Horace,  or  Cato,  which  in  his  youth  he  learned, 
and  even  to  his  old  age  serve  him  for  hourly  lessons?  as: 

"  Percontatorem  fugito:  nam  garrulus  idem  est." 
"  Dum  sibi  quisque  placet,  credula  turba  sumus." 

But  the  fitness  it  hath  for  memory  is  notably  proved  by 
all  delivery  of  arts,  wherein,  for  the  most  part,  from  gram- 
mar to  logic,  mathematics,  physic,  and  the  rest,  the  rules 
chiefly  necessary  to  be  borne  away,  are  compiled  in  verses. 
So  that  verse  being  in  itself  sweet  and  orderly,  and  being 
best  for  memory,  the  only  handle  of  knowledge,  it  must 
be  in  jest  that  any  man  can  speak  against  it. 

Now,  then,  go  we  to  the  most  important  imputations 
laid  to  the  poor  poets;  for  aught  I  can  yet  learn,  they 
are  these:  V 

First,  that  there  being  many  other  more  fruitful  knowl- 
edges, a  man  might  better  spend  his  time  in  them  than 
in  this. 


THE   DEFENCE   OF  POESY  ;; 

Secondly,  that  it  is  the  mother  of  lies. 

Thirdly,  that  it  is  the  nurse  of  abuse,  infecting  us  with 
many  pestilent  desires,  with  a  siren  sweetness  drawing 
the  mind  to  the  serpent's  tail  of  sinful  fancies;  and  herein 
especially,  comedies  give  the  largest  field  to  ear,4  as 
Chaucer  saith;  how,  both  in  other  nations  and  ours,  before 
poets  did  soften  us,  we  were  full  of  courage,  given  to 
martial  exercises,  the  pillars  of  manlike  liberty,  and  not 
lulled  asleep  in  shady  idleness  with  poets'  pastimes. 

And  lastly,  and  chiefly,  they  cry  out  with  open  mouth, 
as  if  they  had  overshot  Robin  Hood,  that  Plato  banished 
them  out  of  his  commonwealth.  Truly,  this  is  much,  if 
there  be  much  truth  in  it. 

First,  to  the  first,  that  a  man  might  better  spend  his 
time,  is  a  reason  indeed;  but  it  doth,  as  they  say,  but 
"  petere  principinm."  For  if  it  be,  as  I  affirm,  that  no 
learning  is  so  good  as  that  which  teacheth  and  moveth  to 
virtue,  and  that  none  can  both  teach  and  move  thereto 
so  much  as  poesy,  then  is  the  conclusion  manifest,  that 
ink  and  paper  can  not  be  to  a  more  profitable  purpose  em- 
ployed. And  certainly,  though  a  man  should  grant  their 
first  assumption,  it  should  follow,  methinks,  very  unwil- 
lingly, that  good  is  not  good,  because  better  is  better. 
But  I  still  and  utterly  deny  that  there  is  sprung  out  of 
earth  a  more  fruitful  knowledge. 

To  the  second,  therefore,  that  they  should  be  the  prin- 
cipal liars,  I  answer  paradoxically,  but  truly,  I  think  truly, 
that  of  all  writers  under  the  sun  the  poet  is  the  least  liar; 
and  though  he  would,  as  a  poet,  can  scarcely  be  a  liar. 
The  astronomer,  with  his  cousin  the  geometrician,  can 
hardly  escape  when  they  take  upon  them  to  measure  the 
height  of  the  stars.  How  often,  think  you,  do  the  physi- 
cians lie,  when  they  aver  things  good  for  sicknesses,  which 
afterward  send  Charon  a  great  number  of  souls  drowned 
in  a  potion  before  they  come  to  his  ferry?  And  no  less 
of  the  rest  which  take  upon  them  to  affirm.  Now  for 
the  poet:  he  nothing  affirmeth,  and  therefore  never  lieth; 
for,  as  I  take  it,  to  lie  is  to  affirm  that  to  be  true  which 
is  false;  so  as  the  other  artists,  and  especially  the  historian, 
affirming  many  things,  can,  in  the  cloudy  knowledge  of 
mankind,  hardly  escape  from  many  lies.  But  the  poet,  as 
6 


7g  SIDNEY 

I  said  before,  never  affirmeth;  the  poet  never  maketh  any 
circles  about  your  imagination,  to  conjure  you  to  believe 
for  true  what  he  writeth;  he  citeth  not  authorities  of  other 
histories,  but  even  for  his  entry  calleth  the  sweet  Muses 
to  inspire  into  him  a  good  invention;  in  troth,  not  labour- 
ing to  tell  you  what  is  or  is  not,  but  what  should  or 
should  not  be.  And,  therefore,  though  he  recount  things 
not  true,  yet  because  he  telleth  them  not  for  true  he  lieth 
not;  without  we  will  say  that  Nathan  lied  in  his  speech, 
before  alleged,  to  David;  which,  as  a  wicked  man  durst 
scarce  say,  so  think  I  none  so  simple  would  say  that 
lied  in  the  tales  of  his  beasts;  for  who  thinketh  that 
wrote  it  for  actually  true  were  well  worthy  to  have 
his  name  chronicled  among  the  beasts  he  writeth  of. 
What  child  is  there,  that  cometh  to  a  play,  and  seeing 
Thebes  written  in  great  letters  upon  an  old  door,  doth 
believe  that  it  is  Thebes?  If,  then,  a  man  can  arrive  to 
the  child's  age,  to  know  that  the  poets'  persons  and  doings 
are  but  pictures  what  should  be,  and  not  stories  what  have 
been,  they  will  never  give  the  lie  to  things  not  affirma- 
tively but  allegorically  and  figurately  written;  and  there- 
fore, as  in  history,  looking  for  truth,  they  may  go  away 
full  fraught  with  falsehood,  so  in  poesy,  looking  but  for 
fiction,  they  shall  use  the  narration  but  as  an  imaginative 
ground-plot  of  a  profitable  invention. 

But  hereto  is  replied  that  the  poets  give  names  to 
men  they  write  of,  which  argueth  a  conceit  of  an  actual 
truth,  and  so,  not  being  true,  proveth  a  falsehood.  And 
doth  the  lawyer  lie,  then,  when,  under  the  names  of  John 
of  the  Stile,  and  John  of  the  Nokes,  he  putteth  his  case? 
But  that  is  easily  answered:  their  naming  of  men  is  but  to 
make  their  picture  the  more  lively,  and  not  to  build  any 
history.  Painting  men,  they  can  not  leave  men  nameless: 
we  see  we  can  not  play  at  chess,  but  that  we  must  give 
names  to  our  chessmen;  and  yet,  methinks,  he  were  a  very 
partial  champion  of  truth  that  would  say  we  lied  for  giv- 
ing a  piece  of  wood  the  reverend  title  of  a  bishop.  The 
poet  nameth  Cyrus  and  ^Eneas  no  other  way  than  to  show 
what  men  of  their  fames,  fortunes,  and  estates  should  do. 

Their  third  is,  how  much  it  abuseth  men's  wit,  training 
it  to  a  wanton  sinfulness  and  lustful  love.  For,  indeed, 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  79 

that  is  the  principal  if  not  only  abuse  I  can  hear  alleged. 
They  say  the  comedies  rather  teach  than  reprehend 
amorous  conceits;  they  say  the  lyric  is  larded  with  pas- 
sionate sonnets;  the  elegiac  weeps  the  want  of  his  mistress; 
and  that  even  to  the  heroical  Cupid  hath  ambitiously 
climbed.  Alas!  Love,  I  would  thou  couldst  as  well  de- 
fend thyself  as  thou  canst  offend  others!  I  would  those 
on  whom  thou  dost  attend  could  either  put  thee  away  or 
yield  good  reason  why  they  keep  thee!  But  grant  love 
of  beauty  to  be  a  beastly  fault,  although  it  be  very  hard, 
since  only  man,  and  no  beast,  hath  that  gift  to  discern 
beauty ;  grant  that  lovely  name  of  love  to  deserve  all  hate- 
ful reproaches,  although  even  some  of  my  masters  the 
philosophers  spent  a  good  deal  of  their  lamp  oil  in  setting 
forth  the  excellency  of  it;  grant,  I  say,  what  they  will 
have  granted,  that  not  only  love,  but  lust,  but  vanity,  but, 
if  they  list,  scurrility,  possess  many  leaves  of  the  poets' 
books;  yet,  think  I,  when  this  is  granted,  they  will  find 
their  sentence  may,  with  good  manners,  put  the  last  words 
foremost;  and  not  say  that  poetry  abuseth  man's  wit,  but 
that  man's  wit  abuseth  poetry.  For  I  will  not  deny  but 
that  man's  wit  may  make  poesy,  which  should  be  (frpcurntcr), 
which  some  learned  have  defined,  figuring  forth  good 
things,  to  be  fyavravTucr),  which  doth  contrariwise  infect 
the  fancy  with  unworthy  objects;  as  the  painter,  who 
should  give  to  the  eye  either  some  excellent  perspective, 
or  some  fine  picture  fit  for  building  or  fortification,  or 
containing  in  it  some  notable  example,  as  Abraham  sac- 
rificing his  son  Isaac,  Judith  killing  Holofernes,  David 
fighting  with  Goliath,  may  leave  those,  and  please 
an  ill-pleased  eye  with  wanton  shows  of  better-hidden 
matters. 

But  what!  shall  the  abuse  of  a  thing  make  the  right 
use  odious?  Nay,  truly,  though  I  yield  that  poesy  may 
not  only  be  abused,  but  that,  being  abused,  by  the  reason 
of  his  sweet  charming  force,  it  can  do  more  hurt  than 
any  other  army  of  words,  yet  shall  it  be  so  far  from  con- 
cluding that  the  abuse  shall  give  reproach  to  the  abused, 
that,  contrariwise,  it  is  a  good  reason  that  whatsoever  be- 
ing abused  doth  most  harm,  being  rightly  used  (and  upon 
the  right  use  each  thing  receives.  his  title)  doth  most 


80  SIDNEY 

good.  Do  we  not  see  skill  of  physic,  the  best  rampire  to 
our  often-assaulted  bodies,  being  abused,  teach  poison,  the 
most  violent  destroyer?  Doth  not  knowledge  of  law, 
whose  end  is  to  even  and  right  all  things,  being  abused, 
grow  the  crooked  fosterer  of  horrible  injuries?  Doth  not 
(to  go  in  the  highest)  God's  word  abused  breed  heresy, 
and  his  name  abused  become  blasphemy?  Truly,  a  needle 
can  not  do  much  hurt,  and  as  truly  (with  leave  of  ladies 
be  it  spoken)  it  can  not  do  much  good.  With  a  sword  thou 
mayest  kill  thy  father,  and  with  a  sword  thou  mayest  de- 
fend thy  prince  and  country;  so  that,  as  in  their  calling 
poets  fathers  of  lies,  they  said  nothing,  so  in  this  their 
argument  of  abuse  they  prove  the  commendation. 

They  allege  herewith  that  before  poets  began  to  be  in 
price,  our  nation  had  set  their  heart's  delight  upon  action, 
and  not  imagination;  rather  doing  things  worthy  to  be 
written,  than  writing  things  fit  to  be  done.  What  that 
before  time  was,  I  think  scarcely  Sphinx  can  tell,  since 
no  memory  is  so  ancient  that  gives  not  the  precedence  to 
poetry.  And  certain  it  is  that,  in  our  plainest  homeli- 
ness, yet  never  was  the  Albion  nation  without  poetry. 
Marry,  this  argument,  though  it  be  levelled  against  poetry, 
yet  is  it  indeed  a  chain-shot  against  all  learning  or  book- 
ishness,  as  they  commonly  term  it.  Of  such  mind  were 
certain  Goths,  of  whom  it  is  written  that,  having  in  the 
spoil  of  a  famous  city  taken  a  fair  library,  one  hangman, 
belike  fit  to  execute  the  fruits  of  their  wits,  who  had  mur- 
dered a  great  number  of  bodies,  would  have  set  fire  in  it. 
"No,"  said  another,  very  gravely;  "take  heed  what  you 
do;  for  while  they  are  busy  about  those  toys  we  shall  with 
more  leisure  conquer  their  countries."  This,  indeed,  is 
the  ordinary  doctrine  of  ignorance,  and  many  words  some- 
times I  have  heard  spent  in  it;  but  because  this  reason  is 
generally  against  all  learning,  as  well  as  poetry,  or  rather 
all  learning  but  poetry;  because  it  were  too  large  a  digres- 
sion to  handle  it,  or  at  least  too  superfluous,  since  it  is 
manifest  that  all  government  of  action  is  to  be  gotten 
by  knowledge,  and  knowledge  best  by  gathering  many 
knowledges,  which  is  reading;  I  only  say  with  Horace,  to 
him  that  is  of  that  opinion: 

"Jubeo  stultum  esse  libenter"; 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  $! 

for  as  for  poetry  itself,  it  is  the  freest  from  this  objection, 
for  poetry  is  the  companion  of  camps.  I  dare  undertake 
Orlando  Furioso,  or  honest  King  Arthur,  will  never  dis- 
please a  soldier; 'but  the  quiddity  of  "  ens  "  and  "  prima 
materia,"  will  hardly  agree  with  a  corselet.  And,  there- 
fore, as  I  said  in  the  beginning,  even  Turks  and  Tartars 
are  delighted  with  poets.  Homer,  a  Greek,  flourished  be- 
fore Greece  flourished;  and  if  to  a  slight  conjecture  a  con- 
jecture may  be  opposed,  truly  it  may  seem  that,  as  by  him 
their  learned  men  took  almost  their  first  light  of  knowl- 
edge, so  their  active  men  received  their  first  motions  of 
courage.  Only  Alexander's  example  may  serve,  who  by 
Plutarch  is  accounted  of  such  virtue,  that  fortune  was  not 
his  guide,  but  his  footstool;  whose  acts  speak  for  him, 
though  Plutarch  did  not;  indeed,  the  phoenix  of  warlike 
princes.  This  Alexander  left  his  schoolmaster,  living 
Aristotle,  behind  him,  but  took  dead  Homer  with  him. 
He  put  the  philosopher  Callisthenes  to  death,  for  his  seem- 
ing philosophical,  indeed,  mutinous,  stubbornness;  but  the 
chief  thing  he  was  ever  heard  to  wish  for  was  that  Homer 
had  been  alive.  He  well  found  he  received  more  bravery 
of  mind  by  the  pattern  of  Achilles  than  by  hearing  the 
definition  of  fortitude.  And,  therefore,  if  Cato  misliked 
Fulvius  for  carrying  Ennius  with  him  to  the  field,  it  may 
be  answered,  that  if  Cato  misliked  it  the  noble  Fulvius 
liked  it,  or  else  he  had  not  done  it;  for  it  was  not  the 
excellent  Cato  Uticensis,  whose  authority  I  would  much 
more  have  reverenced,  but  it  was  the  former,  in  truth,  a 
bitter  punisher  of  faults,  but  else  a  man  that  had  never 
sacrificed  to  the  Graces.  He  misliked  and  cried  out 
against  all  Greek  learning;  and  yet,  being  fourscore  years 
old,  began  to  learn  it,  belike  fearing  that  Plato  under- 
stood not  Latin.  Indeed,  the  Roman  laws  allowed  no 
person  to  be  carried  to  the  wars  but  he  that  was  in  the 
soldiers'  roll.  And,  therefore,  though  Cato  misliked  his 
unmustered  person,  he  misliked  not  his  work.  And  if  he 
had,  Scipio  Nasica  (judged  by  common  consent  the  best 
Roman)  loved  him;  both  the  other  Scipio  brothers,  who 
had  by  their  virtues  no  less  surnames  than  of  Asia  and 
Afric  so  loved  him  that  they  caused  his  body  to  be  buried 
in  their  sepulture.  So  as  Cato's  authority  being  but 


g2  SIDNEY 

against  his  person,  and  that  answered  with  so  far  greater 
than  himself,  is  herein  of  no  validity. 

But  now,  indeed,  my  burden  is  great,  that  Plato's 
name  is  laid  upon  me,  whom  I  must  confess,  of  all  philoso- 
phers, I  have  ever  esteemed  most  worthy  of  reverence; 
and  with  good  reason,  since  of  all  philosophers  he  is  the 
most  poetical.  Yet  if  he  will  defile  the  fountain  out  of 
which  his  flowing  streams  have  proceeded,  let  us  boldly 
examine  with  what  reason  he  did. 

First,  truly,  a  man  might  maliciously  object  that  Plato, 
being  a  philosopher,  was  a  natural  enemy  of  poets;  for, 
indeed,  after  the  philosophers  had  picked  out  of  the  sweet 
mysteries  of  poetry  the  right  discerning  true  points  of 
knowledge,  they  forthwith,  putting  it  in  method,  and  mak- 
ing a  school  art  of  that  which  the  poets  did  only  teach 
by  a  divine  delightfulness,  beginning  to  spurn  at  their 
guides,  like  ungrateful  apprentices,  were  not  content  to 
set  up  shop  for  themselves,  but  sought  by  all  means  to  dis- 
credit their  masters;  which,  by  the  force  of  delight  being 
barred  them,  the  less  they  could  overthrow  them  the 
more  they  hated  them;  for,  indeed,  they  found  for  Homer 
seven  cities  strove  who  should  have  him  for  their  citizen, 
where  many  cities  banished  philosophers,  as  not  fit  mem- 
bers to  live  among  them.  For  only  repeating  certain 
of  Euripides's  verses,  many  Athenians  had  their  lives 
saved  of  the  Syracusans,  where  the  Athenians  themselves 
thought  many  philosophers  unworthy  to  live.  Certain 
poets,  as  Simonides  and  Pindar,  had  so  prevailed  with 
Hiero  the  First  that  of  a  tyrant  they  made  him  a  just 
king;  where  Plato  could  do  so  little  with  Dionysius  that 
he  himself,  of  a  philosopher,  was  made  a  slave.  But  who 
should  do  thus,  I  confess,  should  requite  the  objections 
made  against  poets  with  like  cavillations  against  philoso- 
phers; as  likewise  one  should  do  that  should  bid  one  read 
Phaedrus  or  Symposium  in  Plato,  or  the  discourses  of  love 
in  Plutarch,  and  see  whether  any  poet  do  authorize  abomi- 
nable filthiness  as  they  do. 

Again,  a  man  might  ask  out  of  what  commonwealth 
Plato  doth  banish  them.  In  sooth,  thence  where  he  him- 
self alloweth  community  of  women.  So  as  belike  this  ban- 
ishment grew  not  for  effeminate  wantonness,  since  little 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  83 

should  poetical  sonnets  be  hurtful  when  a  man  might  have 
what  woman  he  listed.  But  I  honour  philosophical  in- 
structions, and  bless  the  wits  which  bred  them,  so  as  they 
be  not  abused,  which  is  likewise  stretched  to  poetry. 
Saint  Paul  himself  sets  a  watchword  upon  philosophy; 
indeed,  upon  the  abuse.  So  doth  Plato  upon  the  abuse, 
not  upon  poetry.  Plato  found  fault  that  the  poets  of  his 
time  filled  the  world  with  wrong  opinions  of  the  gods, 
making  light  tales  of  that  unspotted  essence,  and,  there- 
fore, would  not  have  the  youth  depraved  with  such  opin- 
ions. Herein  may  much  be  said;  let  this  suffice:  the  poets 
did  not  induce  such  opinions,  but  did  imitate  those  opin- 
ions already  induced.  For  all  the  Greek  stories  can  well 
testify  that  the  very  religion  of  that  time  stood  upon  many 
and  many-fashioned  gods;  not  taught  so  by  poets,  but  fol- 
lowed according  to  their  nature  of  imitation.  Who  list 
may  read  in  Plutarch  the  discourses  of  Isis  and  Osiris,  of 
the  cause  why  oracles  ceased,  of  the  divine  providence, 
and  see  whether  the  theology  of  that  nation  stood  not 
upon  such  dreams,  which  the  poets  indeed  superstitiously 
observed ;  and  truly,  since  they  had  not  the  light  of  Christ, 
did  much  better  in  it  than  the  philosophers,  who,  shaking 
off  superstition,  brought  in  atheism. 

Plato,  therefore,  whose  authority  I  had  much  rather 
justly  construe  than  unjustly  resist,  meant  not  in  general 
of  poets,  in  those  words  of  which  Julius  Scaliger  saith, 
"  qua  authoritate  barbari  quidam  atque  insipidi  abuti  velint 
ad  poetas  e  republica  exigendos  ";  but  only  meant  to  drive 
out  those  wrong  opinions  of  the  Deity,  whereof  now,  with- 
out further  law,  Christianity  hath  taken  away  all  the  hurt- 
ful belief,  perchance  as  he  thought,  nourished  by  then 
esteemed  poets.  And  a  man  need  go  no  farther  than  to 
Plato  himself  to  know  his  meaning;  who,  in  his  dialogue 
called  Ion,  giveth  high  and  rightly  divine  commendation 
unto  poetry.  So  as  Plato,  banishing  the  abuse,  not  the 
thing,  not  banishing  it,  but  giving  due  honour  to  it,  shall 
be  our  patron,  and  not  our  adversary.  For,  indeed,  J 
had  much  rather,  since  truly  I  may  do  it,  show  their  mis- 
taking of  Plato,  under  whose  lion's  skin  they  would  make 
an  ass-like  braying  against  poesy,  than  go  about  to  over- 
throw his  authority;  whom,  the  wiser  a  man  is,  the 


84  SIDNEY 

more  just  cause  he  shall  find  to  have  in  admiration, 
especially  since  he  attributeth  unto  poesy  more  than 
myself  do — namely,  to  be  a  very  inspiring  of  a  divine 
force,  far  above  man's  wit,  as  in  the  forenamed  dialogue 
is  apparent. 

Of  the  other  side,  who  would  show  the  honours  have 
been  by  the  best  sort  of  judgments  granted  them,  a  whole 
sea  of  examples  would  present  themselves:  Alexanders, 
Caesars,  Scipios,  all  favourers  of  poets;  Laelius,  called  the 
Roman  Socrates,  himself  a  poet,  so  as  part  of  "  Heauton- 
timoroumenos,"  in  Terence,  was  supposed  to  be  made  by 
him.  And  even  the  Greek  Socrates,  whom  Apollo  con- 
firmed to  be  the  only  wise  man,  is  said  to  have  spent 
part  of  his  old  time  in  putting  ^sop's  Fables  into  verse; 
and,  therefore,  full  evil  should  it  become  his  scholar,  Plato, 
to  put  such  words  in  his  master's  mouth  against  poets. 
But  what  needs  more?  Aristotle  writes  the  Art  of  Poesy; 
and  why,  if  it  should  not  be  written?  Plutarch  teacheth 
the  use  to  be  gathered  of  them;  and  how,  if  they  should 
not  be  read?  And  who  reads  Plutarch's  either  history  or 
philosophy  shall  find  he  trimmeth  both  their  garments 
with  gards  of  poesy. 

But  I  list  not  to  defend  poesy  with  the  help  of  his 
underling  historiographer.  Let  it  suffice  to  have  showed 
it  is  a  fit  soil  for  praise  to  dwell  upon,  and  what  dispraise 
may  be  set  upon  it  is  either  easily  overcome  or  trans- 
formed into  just  commendation.  So,  that  since  the  excel- 
lencies of  it  may  be  so  easily  and  so  justly  confirmed,  and 
the  low,  creeping  objections  so  soon  trodden  down,  it 
not  being  an  art  of  lies,  but  of  true  doctrine;  not  of  effemi- 
nateness,  but  of  notable  stirring  of  courage ;  not  of  abusing 
man's  wit,  but  of  strengthening  man's  wit;  not  banished, 
but  honoured  by  Plato,  let  us  rather  plant  more  laurels  for 
to  ingarland  the  poets'  heads  (which  honour  of  being 
laureate,  as  besides  them  only  triumphant  captains  were, 
is  a  sufficient  authority  to  show  the  price  they  ought  to 
be  held  in)  than  suffer  the  ill-favoured  breath  of  such 
wrong  speakers  once  to  blow  upon  the  clear  springs  of 
poesy. 

But  since  I  have  run  so  long  a  career  in  this  matter, 
methinks,  before  I  give  my  pen  a  full  stop,  it  shall  be  but 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  gr 

a  little  more  lost  time  to  inquire  why  England,  the  mother 
of  excellent  minds,  should  be  grown  so  hard  a  stepmother 
to  poets,  who,  certainly,  in  wit  ought  to  pass  all  others, 
since  all  only  proceeds  from  their  wit;  being,  indeed, 
makers  of  themselves,  not  takers  of  others.  How  can  I 
but  exclaim: 

"  Musa,  mihi  causas  memora,  quo  numine  laeso! " 

Sweet  poesy!  that  hath  anciently  had  kings,  emperors, 
senators,  great  captains,  such  as,  besides  a  thousand  others, 
David,  Adrian,  Sophocles,  Germanicus,  not  only  to  favour 
poets,  but  to  be  poets;  and  of  our  nearer  times  can  pre- 
sent for  her  patrons  a  Robert,  King  of  Sicily;  the  great 
King  Francis  of  France;  King  James  of  Scotland;  such 
cardinals  as  Bembus  and  Bibiena;  such  famous  preachers 
and  teachers  as  Beza  and  Melanchthon;  so  learned  philoso- 
phers as  Fracastorius  and  Scaliger;  so  great  orators  as 
Pontanus  and  Muretus;  so  piercing  wits  as  George  Bu- 
chanan; so  grave  counsellors  as,  besides  many,  but  before 
all,  that  Hospital  of  France,  than  whom,  I  think,  that 
realm  never  brought  forth  a  more  accomplished  judgment 
more  firmly  builded  upon  virtue;  I  say  these,  with  numbers 
of  others,  not  only  to  read  others'  poesies,  but  to  poetize 
for  others'  reading;  that  poesy,  thus  embraced  in  all  other 
places,  should  only  find,  in  our  time,  a  hard  welcome  in 
England,  I  think  the  very  earth  laments  it,  and  therefore 
decks  our  soil  with  fewer  laurels  than  it  was  accustomed. 
For  heretofore  poets  have  in  England  also  flourished;  and, 
which  is  to  be  noted,  even  in  those  times  when  the  trumpet 
of  Mars  did  sound  loudest.  And  now,  that  an  over-faint 
quietness  should  seem  to  strew  the  house  for  poets,  they 
are  almost  in  as  good  reputation  as  the  mountebanks  at 
Venice.  Truly,  even  that,  as  of  the  one  side  it  giveth  great 
praise  to  poesy,  which,  like  Venus  (but  to  better  purpose), 
had  rather  be  troubled  in  the  net  with  Mars,  than  enjoy 
the  homely  quiet  of  Vulcan;  so  serveth  it  for  a  piece  of 
a  reason  why  they  are  less  grateful  to  idle  England,  which 
now  can  scarce  endure  the  pain  of  a  pen.  Upon  this  neces- 
sarily followeth  that  base  men,  with  servile  wits,  under- 
take it,  who  think  it  enough  if  they  can  be  rewarded  of 
the  printer;  and  so  as  Epaminondas  is  said,  with  the  hon- 


86  SIDNEY 

our  of  his  virtue,  to  have  made  an  office,  by  his  exer- 
cising it,  which  before  was  contemptible,  to  become  highly 
respected,  so  these  men,  no  more  but  setting  their  names 
to  it,  by  their  own  disgracefulness  disgrace  the  most  grace- 
ful poesy.  For  now,  as  if  all  the  Muses  were  got  with 
child  to  bring  forth  bastard  poets,  without  any  commission 
they  do  post  over  the  banks  of  Helicon,  until  they  make 
their  readers  more  weary  than  post-horses;  while,  in  the 
meantime,  they, 

"  Queis  meliore  luto  finxit  praecordia  Titan," 

are  better  content  to  suppress  the  outflowings  of  their  wit, 
than  by  publishing  them  to  be  accounted  knights  of  the 
same  order. 

But  I  that,  before  ever  I  durst  aspire  unto  the  dignity, 
am  admitted  into  the  company  of  the  paper-blurrers,  do 
find  the  very  true  cause  of  our  wanting  estimation,  is  want 
of  desert,  taking  upon  us  to  be  poets  in  despite  of  Pallas. 
Now,  wherein  we  want  desert  were  a  thankworthy  labour 
to  express.  But  if  I  knew,  I  should  have  mended  myself; 
but  as  I  never  desired  the  title,  so  have  I  neglected  the 
means  to  come  by  it,  only,  overmastered  by  some  thoughts, 
I  yielded  an  inky  tribute  unto  them.  Marry,  they  that  de- 
light in  poesy  itself  should  seek  to  know  what  they  do, 
and  how  they  do  especially  look  themselves  in  an  unflat- 
tering glass  of  reason,  if  they  be  inclinable  unto  it. 

For  poesy  must  not  be  drawn  by  the  ears;  it  must  be 
gently  led,  or  rather  it  must  lead,  which  was  partly  the 
cause  that  made  the  ancient  learned  affirm  it  was  a  divine 
and  no  human  skill,  since  all  other  knowledges  lie  ready 
for  any  that  have  strength  of  wit;  a  poet  no  industry  can 
make  if  his  own  genius  be  not  carried  into  it.  And  there- 
fore is  an  old  proverb,  "  Orator  fit,  poeta  nascitur."  Yet 
confess  I  always  that,  as  the  fertilest  ground  must  be 
manured,  so  must  the  highest  flying  wit  have  a  Daedalus 
to  guide  him.  That  Daedalus,  they  say,  both  in  this  and 
in  other,  hath  three  wings  to  bear  itself  up  into  the  air 
of  due  commendation — that  is,  art,  imitation,  and  exercise. 
But  these,  neither  artificial  rules  nor  imitative  patterns, 
we  much  cumber  ourselves  withal.  Exercise,  indeed,  we 
do,  but  that  very  f orebackwardly ;  for  where  we  should 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  87 

exercise  to  know,  we  exercise  as  having  known;  and  so  is 
our  brain  delivered  of  much  matter  which  never  was  be- 
gotten by .  knowledge,  for,  there  being  two  principal  parts, 
matter  to  be  expressed  by  words,  and  words  to  express 
the  matter,  in  neither  we  use  art  or  imitation  rightly.  Our 
matter  is  "  quodlibet,"  indeed,  although  wrongly  perform- 
ing Ovid's  verse, 

"  Quicquid  conabor  dicere,  versus  erit"; 

never  marshalling  it  into  any  assured  rank,  that  almost 
the  readers  can  not  tell  where  to  find  themselves. 

Chaucer,  undoubtedly,  did  excellently  in  his  "  Troilus 
and  Cressida  ";  of  whom,  truly,  I  know  not  whether  to  mar- 
vel more,  either  that  he,  in  that  misty  time,  could  see  so 
clearly,  or  that  we,  in  this  clear  age,  go  so  stumblingly 
after  him.  Ye^  had  he  great  wants,  fit  to  be  forgiven  in 
so  reverend  antiquity.  I  account  the  "  Mirror  of  Magis- 
trates "  5  meetly  furnished  of  beautiful  parts.  And  in  the 
Earl  of  Surrey's  Lyrics,6  many  things  tasting  of  a  noble 
birth,  and  worthy  of  a  noble  mind.  The  "  Shepherds'  Kalen- 
dar  "  7  hath  more  poesy  in  his  eclogues,  indeed,  worthy  the 
reading,  if  I  be  not  deceived.  That  same  framing  of  his 
style  to  an  old  rustic  language  I  dare  not  allow,  since 
neither  Theocritus  in  Greek,  Virgil  in  Latin,  nor  Sanna- 
zaro  in  Italian,  did  affect  it.  Besides  these  I  do  not  re- 
member to  have  seen  but  few  (to  speak  boldly)  printed 
that  have  poetical  sinews  in  them.  For  proof  whereof, 
let  but  most  of  the  verses  be  put  in  prose  and  then  ask 
the  meaning,  and  it  will  be  found  that  one  verse  did  but 
beget  another,  without  ordering,  at  the  first,  what  should 
be  at  the  last,  which  becomes  a  confused  mass  of  words, 
with  a  tinkling  sound  of  rhyme,  barely  accompanied  with 
reason. 

Our  tragedies  and  comedies,  not  without  cause,  are 
cried  out  against,  observing  rules  neither  of  honest  civility 
nor  skilful  poetry.  Excepting  "  Gorboduc  "  8  (again  I  say 
of  those  that  I  have  seen),  which  notwithstanding,  as  it  is 
full  of  stately  speeches  and  well-sounding  phrases,  climb- 
ing to  the  height  of  Seneca  his  style,  and  as  full  of  notable 
morality,  which  it  doth  most  delightfully  teach,  and  so 
obtain  the  very  end  of  poesy;  yet,  in  truth,  it  is  very  de- 


88  SIDNEY 

fectuous  in  the  circumstances,  which  grieves  me,  because 
it  might  not  remain  as  an  exact  model  of  all  tragedies. 
For  it  is  faulty  both  in  place  and  time,  the  two  necessary 
companions  of  all  corporal  actions.  For  where  the  stage 
should  always  represent  but  one  place,  and  the  uttermost 
time  presupposed  in  it  should  be,  both  by  Aristotle's  pre- 
cept and  common  reason,  but  one  day,  there  is  both  many 
days  and  many  places  inartificially  imagined. 

But  if  it  be  so  in  "  Gorboduc,"  how  much  more  in  all 
the  rest?  where  you  shall  have  Asia  of  the  one  side,  and 
Afric  of  the  other,  and  so  many  other  under  kingdoms, 
that  the  player  when  he  comes  in  must  ever  begin  with 
telling  where  he  is,  or  else  the  tale  will  not  be  conceived. 
Now  shall  you  have  three  ladies  walk  to  gather  flowers, 
and  then  we  must  believe  the  stage  to  be  a  garden.  By- 
and-by  we  hear  news  of  shipwreck  in  the  same  place;  then 
we  are  to  blame  if  we  accept  it  not  for  a  rock.  Upon 
the  back  of  that  comes  a  hideous  monster  with  fire  and 
smoke,  and  then  the  miserable  beholders  are  bound  to  take 
it  for  a  cave;  while,  in  the  meantime,  two  armies  fly  in, 
represented  with  four  swords  and  bucklers,  and  then,  what 
hard  heart  will  not  receive  it  for  a  pitched  field? 

Now  of  time  they  are  much  more  liberal,  for  ordinary 
it  is  that  two  young  princes  fall  in  love;  after  many  trav- 
erses she  is  got  with  child;  delivered  of  a  fair  boy;  he 
is  lost,  groweth  a  man,  falleth  in  love,  and  is  ready  to  get 
another  child;  and  all  this  in  two  hours'  space,  which,  how 
absurd  it  is  in  sense,  even  sense  may  imagine,  and  art 
hath  taught,  and  all  ancient  examples  justified,  and  at  this 
day  the  ordinary  players  in  Italy  will  not  err  in.  Yet  will 
some  bring  in  an  example  of  the  "  Eunuch  "  in  Terence, 
that  containeth  matter  of  two  days,  yet  far  short  of  twenty 
years.  True  it  is,  and  so  was  it  to  be  played  in  two  days, 
and  so  fitted  to  the  time  it  set  forth.  And  though  Plautus 
have  in  one  place  done  amiss,  let  us  hit  it  with  him,  and 
not  miss  with  him.  But  they  will  say,  How  then  shall 
we  set  forth  a  story  which  contains  both  many  places  and 
many  times?  And  do  they  not  know  that  a  tragedy  is  tied 
to  the  laws  of  poesy,  and  not  of  history;  not  bound  to 
follow  the  story,  but  having  liberty  either  to  feign  a  quite 
new  matter,  or  to  frame  the  history  to  the  most  tragical 


THE    DEFENCE   OF   POESY 


89 


convenience?  Again,  many  things  may  be  told  which 
can  not  be  showed,  if  they  know  the  difference  betwixt 
reporting  and  representing.  As,  for  example,  I  may  speak, 
though  I  am  here,  of  Peru,  and  in  speech  digress  from 
that  to  the  description  of  Calicut;  but  in  action  I  can  not 
represent  it  without  Pacolet's  horse.  And  so  was  the 
manner  the  ancients  took  by  some  "  Nuntius,"  to  recount 
things  done  in  former  time,  or  other  place. 

Lastly,  if  they  will  represent  a  history,  they  must  not, 
as  Horace  saith,  begin  "  ab  ovo,"  but  they  must  come  to 
the  principal  point  of  that  one  action  which  they  will  repre- 
sent. By  example  this  will  be  best  expressed:  I  have  a 
story  of  young  Polydorus,  delivered,  for  safety's  sake,  with 
great  riches,  by  his  father  Priamus,  to  Polymnestor,  King 
of  Thrace,  in  the  Trojan  war  time.  He,  after  some  years, 
hearing  of  the  overthrow  of  Priamus,  for  to  make  the 
treasure  his  own,  murdereth  the  child;  the  body  of  the 
child  is  taken  up:  Hecuba,  she,  the  same  day,  findeth  a 
sleight  to  be  revenged  most  cruelly  of  the  tyrant.  Where 
now  would  one  of  our  tragedy-writers  begin  but  with  the 
delivery  of  the  child?  Then  should  he  sail  over  into 
Thrace,  and  so  spend  I  know  not  how  many  years,  and 
travel  numbers  of  places.  But  where  doth  Euripides? 
Even  with  the  finding  of  the  body,  leaving  the  rest  to  be 
told  by  the  spirit  of  Polydorus.  This  needs  no  further  to 
be  enlarged;  the  dullest  wit  may  conceive  it. 

But  besides  these  gross  absurdities,  how  all  their  plays 
be  neither  right  tragedies  nor  right  comedies,  mingling 
kings  and  clowns,  not  because  the  matter  so  carrieth  it, 
but  thrust  in  the  clown  by  head  and  shoulders  to  play  a 
part  in  majestical  matters,  with  neither  decency  nor  dis- 
cretion; so  as  neither  the  admiration  and  commiseration, 
nor  the  right  sportfulness,  is  by  their  mongrel  tragi-comedy 
obtained.  I  know  Apuleius  did  somewhat  so,  but  that  is  a 
thing  recounted  with  space  of  time,  not  represented  in  one 
moment;  and  I  know  the  ancients  have  one  or  two  ex- 
amples of  tragi-comedies,  as  Plautus  hath  "  Amphytrio." 
But,  if  we  mark  them  well,  we  shall  find  that  they  never,  or 
very  daintily,  match  hornpipes  and  funerals.  So  falleth 
it  out  that,  having  indeed  no  right  comedy  in  that  comical 
part  of  our  tragedy,  we  have  nothing  but  scurrility,  un- 


90  SIDNEY 

worthy  of  any  chaste  ears;  or  some  extreme  show  of  dolt- 
ishness,  indeed,  fit  to  lift  up  a  loud  laughter,  and  nothing 
else;  where  the  whole  tract  of  a  comedy  should  be  full 
of  delight,  as  the  tragedy  should  be  still  maintained  in  a 
well-raised  admiration. 

But  our  comedians  think  there  is  no  delight  without 
laughter,  which  is  very  wrong,  for  though  laughter  may 
come  with  delight,  yet  cometh  it  not  of  delight  as  though 
delight  should  be  the  cause  of  laughter;  but  well  may  one 
thing  breed  both  together.  Nay,  in  themselves  they  have, 
as  it  were,  a  kind  of  contrariety.  For  delight  we  scarcely 
do,  but  in  things  that  have  a  conveniency  to  ourselves,  or 
to  the  general  nature;  laughter  almost  ever  cometh  of 
things  most  disproportioned  to  ourselves  and  nature.  De- 
light hath  a  joy  in  it  either  permanent  or  present;  laughter 
hath  only  a  scornful  tickling.  For  example,  we  are  rav- 
ished with  delight  to  see  a  fair  woman,  and  yet  are  far 
from  being  moved  to  laughter;  we  laugh  at  deformed 
creatures,  wherein  certainly  we  can  not  delight;  we  delight 
in  good  chances,  we  laugh  at  mischances;  we  delight  to 
hear  the  happiness  of  our  friends  and  country,  at  which 
he  were  worthy  to  be  laughed  at  that  would  laugh;  we 
shall,  contrarily,  sometimes  laugh  to  find  a  matter  quite 
mistaken,  and  go  down  the  hill  against  the  bias,  in  the 
mouth  of  some  such  men,  as  for  the  respect  of  them,  one 
shall  be  heartily  sorry  he  can  not  choose  but  laugh,  and 
so  is  rather  pained  than  delighted  with  laughter.  Yet 
deny  I  not  but  that  they  may  go  well  together;  for,  as 
in  Alexander's  picture  well  set  out,  we  delight  without 
laughter,  and  in  twenty  mad  antics  we  laugh  without  de- 
light; so  in  Hercules,  painted  with  his  great  beard  and 
furious  countenance,  in  a  woman's  attire,  spinning  at 
Omphale's  commandment,  it  breeds  both  delight  and 
laughter,  for  the  representing  of  so  strange  a  power  in 
love  procures  delight,  and  the  scornfulness  of  the  action 
stirreth  laughter. 

But  I  speak  to  this  purpose  that  all  the  end  of  the 
comical  part  be  not  upon  such  scornful  matters  as  stir 
laughter  only,  but  mix  with  it  that  delightful  teaching 
which  is  the  end  of  poesy.  And  the  great  fault,  even  in 
that  point  of  laughter,  and  forbidden  plainly  by  Aristotle, 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  9! 

is  that  they  stir  laughter  in  sinful  things,  which  are  rather 
execrable  than  ridiculous;  or  in  miserable,  which  are  rather 
to  be  pitied  than  scorned.  For  what  is  it  to  make  folks 
gape  at  a  wretched  beggar,  and  a  beggarly  clown;  or, 
against  the  law  of  hospitality,  to  jest  at  strangers  because 
they  speak  not  English  so  well  as  we  do?  what  do  we 
learn,  since  it  is  certain, 

"  Nil  habet  infelix  paupertas  durius  in  se, 
Quam  quod  ridicules  homines  facit?" 

But  rather  a  busy,  loving  courtier,  and  a  heartless, 
threatening  Thraso;  a  self-wise,  seeming  schoolmaster;  a 
wry-transformed  traveller;  these,  if  we  saw  walk  in  stage 
names,  which  we  play  naturally,  therein  were  delightful 
laughter  and  teaching  delightfulness;  as  in  the  other,  the 
tragedies  of  Buchanan  do  justly  bring  forth  a  divine  ad- 
miration. 

But  I  have  lavished  out  too  many  words  of  this  play 
matter;  I  do  it  because,  as  they  are  excelling  parts  of 
poesy,  so  is  there  none  so  much  used  in  England,  and  none 
can  be  more  pitifully  abused;  which,  like  an  unmannerly 
daughter  showing  a  bad  education,  causeth  her  mother 
Poesy's  honesty  to  be  called  in  question. 

Other  sorts  of  poetry,  almost,  have  we  none,  but  that 
lyrical  kind  of  songs  and  sonnets,  which,  if  the  Lord  gave 
us  so  good  minds,  how  well  it  might  be  employed,  and  with 
how  heavenly  fruits,  both  private  and  public,  in  singing 
the  praises  of  the  immortal  beauty,  the  immortal  goodness 
of  that  God,  who  giveth  us  hands  to  write,  and  wits  to 
conceive;  of  which  we  might  well  want  words,  but  never 
matter;  of  which  we  could  turn  our  eyes  to  nothing,  but 
we  should  ever  have  new  budding  occasions. 

But,  truly,  many  of  such  writings  as  come  under  the 
banner  of  unresistible  love,  if  I  were  a  mistress,  would 
never  persuade  me  they  were  in  love;  so  coldly  they  apply 
fiery  speeches,  as  men  that  had  rather  read  lovers'  writings, 
and  so  caught  up  certain  swelling  phrases,  which  hang 
together  like  a  man  that  once  told  me  "  the  wind  was 
at  northwest  and  by  south,"  because  he  would  be  sure  to 
name  winds  enough;  than  that,  in  truth,  they  feel  those 
passions,  which  easily,  as  I  think,  may  be  bewrayed  by 


92  SIDNEY 

that  same  forcibleness,  or  "  energia  "  (as  the  Greeks  call 
it)  of  the  writer.  But  let  this  be  a  sufficient,  though  short 
note,  that  we  miss  the  right  use  of  the  material  point  of 
poesy. 

Now  for  the  outside  of  it,  which  is  words,  or  (as  I 
may  term  it)  diction,  it  is  even  well  worse;  so  is  that 
honey-flowing  matron  eloquence,  apparelled,  or  rather  dis- 
guised, in  a  courtesanlike  painted  affectation:  one  time 
with  so  far-fetched  words  that  many  seem  monsters,  but 
most  seem  strangers  to  any  poor  Englishman;  another 
time  with  coursing  of  a  letter,  as  if  they  were  bound  to 
follow  the  method  of  a  dictionary;  another  time  with  fig- 
ures and  flowers,  extremely  winter-starved. 

But  I  would  this  fault  were  only  peculiar  to  versifiers, 
and  had  not  as  large  possession  among  prose-printers,  and, 
which  is  to  be  marvelled,  among  many  scholars,  and,  which 
is  to  be  pitied,  among  some  preachers.  Truly,  I  could 
wish  (if  at  least  I  might  be  so  bold  to  wish,  in  a  thing  be- 
yond the  reach  of  my  capacity)  the  diligent  imitators  of 
Tully  and  Demosthenes,  most  worthy  to  be  imitated,  did 
not  so  much  keep  Nizolian  paper-books  of  their  figures 
and  phrases,  as  by  attentive  translation,  as  it  were,  devour 
them  whole,  and  make  them  wholly 'theirs.  For  now  they 
cast  sugar  and  spice  upon  every  dish  that  is  served  at  the 
table;  like  those  Indians,  not  content  to  wear  ear-rings 
at  the  fit  and  natural  place  of  the  ears,  but  they  will  thrust 
jewels  through  their  nose  and  lips,  because  they  will  be 
sure  to  be  fine.  Tully,  when  he  was  to  drive  out  Catiline, 
as  it  were  with  a  thunderbolt  of  eloquence,  often  useth  the 
figure  of  repetition,  as  "  Vivit  et  vincit,  imo  in  senatum 
venit,  imo  in  senatum  venit,"  etc.  Indeed,  inflamed  with 
a  well-grounded  rage,  he  would  have  his  words,  as  it  were, 
double  out  of  his  mouth;  and  so  do  that  artificially,  which 
we  see  men  in  choler  do  naturally.  And  we,  having  noted 
the  grace  of  those  words,  hale  them  in  sometimes  to  a 
familiar  epistle,  when  it  were  too  much  choler  to  be 
choleric. 

How  well  store  of  "  similiter  cadences  "  doth  sound 
with  the  gravity  of  the  pulpit  I  would  but  invoke  Demos- 
thenes's  soul  to  tell,  who  with  a  rare  daintiness  useth  them. 
Truly,  they  have  made  me  think  of  the  sophister,  that  with 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY 


93 


too  much  subtlety  would  prove  two  eggs  three,  and 
though  he 'might  be  counted  a  sophister,  had  none  for  his 
labour.  So  these  men,  bringing  in  such  kind  of  eloquence, 
well  may  they  obtain  an  opinion  of  a  seeming  fineness,  but 
persuade  few,  which  should  be  the  end  of  their  fineness. 

Now  for  similitudes  in  certain  printed  discourses,  I 
think  all  herbalists,  all  stories  of  beasts,  fowls,  and  fishes 
are  rifled  up,  that  they  may  come  in  multitudes  to  wait 
upon  any  of  our  conceits,  which  certainly  is  as  absurd  a 
surfeit  to  the  ears  as  is  possible.  For  the  force  of  a  simili- 
tude not  being  to  prove  anything  to  a  contrary  disputer, 
but  only  to  explain  to  a  willing  hearer;  when  that  is  done, 
the  rest  is  a  most  tedious  prattling,  rather  overswaying  the 
memory  from  the  purpose  whereto  they  were  applied  than 
any  whit  informing  the  judgment,  already  either  satisfied, 
or  by  similituues  not  to  be  satisfied. 

For  my  part,  I  do  not  doubt,  when  Antonius  and 
Crassus,  the  great  forefathers  of  Cicero  in  eloquence,  the 
one  (as  Cicero  testifieth  of  them)  pretended  not  to  know 
art,  the  other  not  to  set  by  it,  because  with  a  plain  sen- 
sibleness  they  might  win  credit  of  popular  ears,  which 
credit  is  the  nearest  step  to  persuasion  (which  persuasion 
is  the  chief  mark  of  oratory),  I  do  not  doubt,  I  say,  but 
that  they  used  these  knacks  very  sparingly;  which  who 
doth  generally  use,  any  man  may  see,  doth  dance  to  his 
own  music;  and  so  to  be  noted  by  the  audience,  more 
careful  to  speak  curiously  than  truly.  Undoubtedly  (at 
least  to  my  opinion  undoubtedly)  I  have  found  in  divers 
small-learned  courtiers,  a  more  sound  style,  than  in  some 
professors  of  learning;  of  which  I  can  guess  no  other  cause 
but  that  the  courtier,  following  that  which  by  practice  he 
findeth  fittest  to  Nature,  therein  (though  he  know  it  not) 
doth  according  to  art,  though  not  by  art;  where  the  other, 
using  art  to  show  art,  and  not  hide  art  (as  in  these  cases 
he  should  do),  flieth  from  Nature,  and  indeed  abuseth  art. 

But  what!  methinks  I  deserve  to  be  pounded  for  stray- 
ing from  poetry  to  oratory;  but  both  have  such  an  affinity 
in  the  wordish  considerations  that  I  think  this  digression 
will  make  my  meaning  receive  the  fuller  understanding, 
which  is  not  to  take  upon  me  to  teach  poets  how  they 
should  do,  but  only  finding  myself  sick  among  the  rest,  to 


94  SIDNEY 

show  some  one  or  two  spots  of  the  common  infection 
grown  among  the  most  part  of  writers;  that,  acknowledg- 
ing ourselves  somewhat  awry,  we  may  bend  to  the  right 
use  both  of  matter  and  manner,  whereto  our  language 
giveth  us  great  occasion,  being,  indeed,  capable  of  any 
excellent  exercising  of  it.  I  know  some  will  say  it  is  a 
mingled  language;  and  why  not  so  much  the  better,  tak- 
ing the  best  of  both  the  other?  Another  will  say  it  wanteth 
grammar.  Nay,  truly,  it  hath  that  praise,  that  it  wants 
not  grammar,  for  grammar  it  might  have,  but  needs  it 
not,  being  so  easy  in  itself,  and  so  void  of  those  cumber- 
some differences  of  cases,  genders,  moods,  and  tenses; 
which,  I  think,  was  a  piece  of  the  tower  of  Babylon's  curse, 
that  a  man  should  be  put  to  school  to  learn  his  mother 
tongue.  But  for  the  uttering  sweetly  and  properly  the 
conceit  of  the  mind,  which  is  the  end  of  speech,  that  hath 
it  equally  with  any  other  tongue  in  the  world,  and  is  par- 
ticularly happy  in  compositions  of  two  or  three  words 
together,  near  the  Greek,  far  beyond  the  Latin;  which  is 
one  of  the  greatest  beauties  can  be  in  a  language. 

Now,  of  versifying  there  are  two  sorts,  the  one  ancient, 
the  other  modern;  the  ancient  marked  the  quantity  of  each 
syllable,  and  according  to  that  framed  his  verse;  the  modern 
observing  only  number,  with  some  regard  of  the  accent, 
the  chief  life  of  it  standeth  in  that  like  sounding  of  the  words, 
which  we  call  rhyme.  Whether  of  these  be  the  more  ex- 
cellent would  bear  many  speeches;  the  ancient,  no  doubt, 
more  fit  for  music,  both  words  and  time  observing  quan- 
tity, and  more  fit  lively  to  express  divers  passions  by  the 
low  or  lofty  sound  of  the  well-weighed  syllable.  The  latter, 
likewise,  with  his  rhyme  striketh  a  certain  music  to  the 
ear;  and,  in  fine,  since  it  doth  delight,  though  by  another 
way,  it  obtaineth  the  same  purpose;  there  being  in  either, 
sweetness,  and  wanting  in  neither,  majesty.  Truly,  the 
English,  before  any  vulgar  language  I  know,  is  fit  for  both 
sorts;  for,  for  the  ancient,  the  Italian  is  so  full  of  vowels 
that  it  must  ever  be  cumbered  with  elisions;  the  Dutch  so, 
of  the  other  side,  with  consonants  that  they  can  not  yield 
the  sweet  sliding  fit  for  a  verse.  The  French,  in  his  whole 
language,  hath  not  one  word  that  hath  his  accent  in  the 
last  syllable  saving  two,  called  antepenultima,  and  little 


THE   DEFENCE   OF   POESY  95 

more  hath  the  Spanish;  and  therefore  very  gracelessly  may 
they  use  dactyles.  The  English  is  subject  to  none  of  these 
defects. 

Now  for  rhyme,  though  we  do  not  observe  quantity, 
yet  we  observe  the  accent  very  precisely,  which  other  lan- 
guages either  can  not  do,  or  will  not  do  so  absolutely. 
That  "  caesura,"  or  breathing-place,  in  the  midst  of  the 
verse,  neither  Italian  nor  Spanish  have,  the  French  and  we 
never  almost  fail  of.  Lastly,  even  the  very  rhyme  itself  the 
Italian  can  not  put  in  the  last  syllable,  by  the  French 
named  the  masculine  rhyme,  but  still  in  the  next  to  the 
last,  which  the  French  call  the  female;  or  the  next  before 
that,  which  the  Italian  calls  "  sdrucciola  " : 9  the  example 
of  the  former  is,  "  buono,"  "  suono  -" ;  of  the  "  sdrucciola  "  is, 
"  femina,"  "  semina."  The  French,  of  the  other  side,  hath 
both  the  male,  as  "  bon,"  "  son/'  and  the  female,  as 
"plaise,"  "raise";  but  the  "sdrucciola"  he  hath  not; 
where  the  English  hath  all  three,  as  "due,"  "true," 
"  father,"  "  rather,"  motion,"  "  potion  ";  with  much  more 
which  might  be  said,  but  that  already  I  find  the  trifling  of 
this  discourse  is  much  too  much  enlarged. 

So  that  since  the  ever-praiseworthy  poesy  is  full  of  vir- 
tue, breeding  delightfulness,  and  void  of  no  gift  that  ought 
to  be  in  the  noble  name  of  learning,  since  the  blames  laid 
against  it  are  either  false  or  feeble;, since  the  cause  why  it 
is  not  esteemed  in  England  is  the  fault  of  poet-apes,  not 
poets;  since,  lastly,  our  tongue  is  most  fit  to  honour  poesy 
and  to  be  honoured  by  poesy,  I  conjure  you  all  that  have 
had  the  evil  luck  to  read  this  ink-wasting  toy  of  mine,  even 
in  the  name  of  the  nine  Muses,  no  more  to  scorn  the 
sacred  mysteries  of  poesy;  no  more  to  laugh  at  the  name 
of  poets  as  though  they  were  next  inheritors  to  fools;  no 
more  to  jest  at  the  reverend  title  of  "a  rhymer";  but  to 
believe  with  Aristotle  that  they  were  the  ancient  treasurers 
of  the  Grecians'  divinity;  to  believe,  with  Bembus,  that 
they  were  the  first  bringers-in  of  all  civility;  to  believe, 
with  Scaliger,  that  no  philosopher's  precepts  can  sooner 
make  you  an  honest  man  than  the  reading  of  Virgil;  to 
believe,  with  Clauserus,  the  translator  of  Cornutus,  that  it 
pleased  the  heavenly  deity  by  Hesiod  and  Homer,  under 
the  veil  of  fables,  to  give  us  all  knowledge,  logic,  rhetoric, 


96  SIDNEY 

philosophy,  natural  and  moral,  and  "  quid  non?  "  to  be- 
lieve, with  me,  that  there  are  many  mysteries  contained  in 
poetry  which  of  purpose  were  written  darkly,  lest  by  pro- 
fane wits  it  should  be  abused;  to  believe,  with  Landin, 
that  they  are  so  beloved  of  the  gods  that  whatsoever  they 
write  proceeds  of  a  divine  fury;  lastly,  to  believe  them- 
selves, when  they  tell  you  they  will  make  you  immortal  by 
their  verses. 

Thus  doing,  your  names  shall  flourish  in  the  printers' 
shops;  thus  doing,  you  shall  be  of  kin  to  many  a  poetical 
preface;  thus  doing,  you  shall  be  most  fair,  most  rich,  most 
wise,  most  all,  you  shall  dwell  upon  superlatives;  thus 
doing,  though  you  be  "  libertino  patre  natus,"  you  shall 
suddenly  grow  "  Herculea  proles," 

"  Si  quid  mea  carmina  possunt ": 

thus  doing,  your  soul  shall  be  placed  with  Dante's  Beatrix, 
or  Virgil's  Anchises. 

But  if  (fie  of  such  a  but!)  you  be  born  so  near  the  dull- 
making  cataract  of  Nilus  that  you  can  not  hear  the  planet- 
like  music  of  poetry;  if  you  have  so  earth-creeping  a  mind 
that  it  can  not  lift  itself  up  to  look  to  the  sky  of  poetry,  or 
rather,  by  a  certain  rustical  disdain,  will  become  such  a 
morhe  as  to  be  a  Momus  of  poetry,  then,  though  I  will  not 
wish  unto  you  the  ass's  ears  of  Midas,  nor  to  be  driven  by 
a  poet's  verses,  as  Bubonax  was,  to  hang  himself;  nor  to 
be  rhymed  to  death,  as  is  said  to  be  done  in  Ireland;  yet 
thus  much  curse  I  must  send  you  in  the  behalf  of  all  poets: 
that  while  you  live,  you  live  in  love,  and  never  get  favour, 
for  lacking  skill  of  a  sonnet;  and  when  you  die,  your  mem- 
ory die  from  the  earth  for  want  of  an  epitaph. 

NOTES 

^his  was  Edward,  the  elder  brother  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton.  His 
name  appeared  at  full  length  in  the  first  edition  of  the  "  Defence,"  and 
the  initials  were  only  substituted  in  the  second,  which  accompanied 
the  Arcadia. 

2  This  is  conceived  to  have  suggested  Shakespeare's  exquisite  de- 
scription: 

"  That  aged  ears  played  truant  at  his  tales, 
And  younger  hearings  were  quite  ravished; 
So  sweet  and  voluble  was  his  discourse,"  etc. 

("  Love's  Labour's  Lost,"  act  ii,  scene  i.) 

8  Ben  Jonson,  charmed  with  the  beauties  of  this  old  song  of 
Chevy  Chase,  was  wont  to  say  that  he  would  rather  have  been  the 


THE  DEFENCE   OF   POESY  97 

author  of  that  little  poem  than  of  all  his  own  works.  The  ballad,  on 
which  there  is  a  beautiful  critique  in  the  "  Spectator,"  Nos.  70  and  74, 
is  conjectured  to  have  been  written  after  this  eulogium  of  Mr.  Sidney, 
who  probably  had  in  contemplation  a  poem  of  an  older  date,  which  is 
inserted  in  Percy's  "  Reliques  of  Ancient  English  Poetry."  (Dr. 
Zouch.) 

"  To  ear  "  or  "  ere  "  is  "  to  till  "  or  "  plough,"  and  is  a  verb  some- 
times used  by  Shakespeare,  Fletcher,  and  many  others  of  the  old 
writers.  In  the  present  case  the  expression  "  comedies  give  the  largest 
field  to  ear  "  probably  means  that  they  afford  the  largest  matter  for 
discourse.  It  is  in  this  sense,  according  to  Urry,  that  the  phrase  is  em- 
ployed by  Chaucer  in  the  passage  referred  to.  ("  Ch.  Pro!.,"  v,  888.) 

*  The  "  Mirror  for  Magistrates  "  was  the  joint  production  of  Thomas 
Sackville,  Lord  Buckhurst  and  Earl  of  Dorset,  and  other  ingenious 
persons  of  less  note,  his  contemporaries  and  friends.    It  first  appeared 
in  print  in  1559.     Buckhurst  contributed  the  "  Induction,"  which  has 
ever  been  esteemed  one  of  the  most  vigorous  remnants  of  old  English 
poetry.    Walpole  styles  him  "  the  patriarch  of  a  race  of  genius  and  wit." 

*  Henry  Howard,  Earl  of  Surrey,  was  the  son  of  Thomas,  Duke  of 
Norfolk.    He  was  the  author  of  several  minor  poems,  of  much  elegance 
and  spirit;  and  he  afforded  the  earliest  specimen  of  blank  verse  in  our 
language  in  his  translation  of  the  fourth  book  of  the  "  JEne'id."    The 
jealousy  of  Henry  VIII  brought  him  to  the  scaffold  in  i546-'47. 

1  Written  by  Spenser,  and  dedicated  "  to  the  noble  and  virtuous  gen- 
tleman, most  worthy  of  all  titles  both  of  learning  and  chivalry,  Master 
Philip  Sidney." 

*  This  play  was  written  by  Lord  Buckhurst  and  Mr.  Thomas  Norton. 
It  was  first  printed  in  the  year  1565,  under  the  title  of  "  Ferrex  and 
Porrex,"  but  in  1590  its  name  was  changed  to  that  of  the  "  Tragedy  of 
Gorboduc."    It  was  represented  before  Queen  Elizabeth  by  the  gentle- 
men of  the  Inner  Temple.    The  first  three  acts  were  the  composition 
of  Norton,  and  the  fourth  and  fifth  of  Lord  Buckhurst. 

*  That  is,  the  easy  sliding  of  words  of  three  or  more  syllables. 


AREOPAGITICA 

A  SPEECH   FOR  THE  LIBERTY  OF 
UNLICENSED   PRINTING 


BY 

JOHN   MILTON 


JOHN  MILTON  was  born  in  London,  December  9,  1608.  His  father,  a 
scrivener,  was  author  of  several  successful  musical  compositions.  The 
family  were  Puritans.  The  son  was  carefully  educated,  first  by  private 
tutors  and  then  at  Cambridge.  The  father  acquired  a  fortune  and  retired 
to  a  home  in  Horton,  Buckinghamshire,  where  the  son,  on  his  return 
from  college,  also  settled,  and  deliberately  took  up  the  task  of  making  a 
poet  of  himself.  He  had  produced  creditable  verses  at  school,  and  he 
now  wrote  his  "  Hymn  on  the  Nativity,"  *'  L' Allegro  "  and  "  Penseroso," 
Latin  poems,  and  "Comus."  He  wrote  "  Lycidas  "  in  his  thirtieth  year. 
In  considering  Milton  as  a  poet,  the  reader  must  skip  from  this  time  to 
his  last  years,  when  he  wrote  "Paradise  Lost"  (completed  in  1663), 
"Paradise  Regained,"  and  "Samson  Agonistes"  (1671).  These,  with 
occasional  sonnets,  sum  up  his  poetical  work.  But  meanwhile  he  had 
been  active  in  politics,  and  had  published  a  great  deal  of  prose,  some  of 
which  still  survives.  He  was  travelling  in  Italy  when  the  uprising 
against  Charles  I  occurred,  and  hurried  home.  He  defended  the  execu- 
tion of  Charles  in  pamphlets  entitled  "The  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magis- 
trates" and  "  Pro  Populo  Anglicano  Defensio,"  and  under  the  Common- 
wealth held  the  office  of  Secretary  of  Foreign  Tongues.  At  the  Restoration 
he  necessarily  retired  from  politics.  He  had  become  blind  at  the  age  of 
forty-six.  Milton  was  married  three  times.  His  first  wife,  Mary  Powell, 
soon  left  him  and  retired  to  her  father's  house,  where  she  remained  two 
years,  and  then  returned  and  lived  with  him  seven  years,  till  her  death 
in  1652.  She  left  three  daughters.  During  the  separation  he  wrote  sev- 
eral pamphlets  in  advocacy  of  divorce,  for  which  he  was  attacked  by  the 
Presbyterians  and  threatened  with  prosecution  by  a  committee  of  Parlia- 
ment. He  had  some  trouble  in  getting  these  tracts  published,  on  account 
of  the  censorship  of  the  press,  and  this  was  the  occasion  of  his  writing 
(1644)  the  "  Areopagitica,"  now  universally  acknowledged  to  be  his  mas- 
terpiece in  prose.  In  all  his  political  writing  he  had  boldly  taken  the  side 
of  popular  liberty,  even  advocating  abolition  of  royalty  and  the  House  of 
Lords  ;  and  this  plea  for  freedom  of  the  press  was  consistent  with  his 
whole  record  as  a  publicist.  He  died  November  8,  1674. 


AREOPAGITICA 

THEY  who  to  states  and  governors  of  the  common- 
wealth direct  their  speech,  High  Court  of  Parlia- 
ment, or,  wanting  such  access  in  a  private  condition, 
write  that  which  they  foresee  may  advance  the  public  good, 
I  suppose  them,  as  at  the  beginning  of  no  mean  endeavour, 
not  a  little  altered  and  moved  inwardly  in  their  minds: 
some  with  doubt  of  what  will  be  the  success,  others  with 
fear  of  what  will  be  the  censure;  some  with  hope,  others 
with  confidence  of  what  they  have  to  speak.  And  me 
perhaps  each  of  these  dispositions,  as  the  subject  was 
whereon  I  entered,  may  have  at  other  times  variously 
affected;  and  likely  might  in  these  foremost  expressions 
now  also  disclose  which  of  them  swayed  most,  but  that 
the  very  attempt  of  this  address  thus  made,  and  the 
thought  of  whom  it  hath  recourse  to,  hath  got  the  power 
within  me  to  a  passion,  far  more  welcome  than  inci- 
dental to  a  preface.  Which  though  I  stay  not  to  con- 
fess ere  any  ask,  I  shall  be  blameless,  if  it  be  no  other  than 
the  joy  and  gratulation  which  it  brings  to  all  who  wish 
and  promote  their  country's  liberty;  whereof  this  whole 
discourse  proposed  will  be  a  certain  testimony,  if  not  a 
trophy.  For  this  is  not  the  liberty  which  we  can  hope,  that 
no  grievance  ever  should  arise  in  the  commonwealth,  that 
let  no  man  in  this  world  expect;  but  when  complaints  are 
freely  heard,  deeply  considered,  and  speedily  reformed, 
then  is  the  utmost  bound  of  civil  liberty  attained  that  wise 
men  look  for.  To  which  if  I  now  manifest  by  the  very 
sound  of  this  which  I  shall  utter  that  we  are  already  in 
good  part  arrived,  and  yet  from  such  a  steep  disadvantage 
of  tyranny  and  superstition  grounded  into  our  principles 
as  was  beyond  the  manhood  of  a  Roman  recovery,  it  will 
be  attributed  first,  as  is  most  due,  to  the  strong  assistance 
7  101 


102  MILTON 

of  God  our  deliverer,  next  to  your  faithful  guidance  and 
undaunted  wisdom,  Lords  and  Commons  of  England. 
Neither  is  it  in  God's  esteem  the  diminution  of  his  glory 
when  honourable  things  are  spoken  of  good  men  and  wor- 
thy magistrates ;  which  if  I  now  first  should  begin  to  do, 
after  so  fair,  a  progress  of  your  laudable  deeds,  and  such 
,a<Tor^  lobligement  upon  the  whole  realm  to  your  inde- 
fatigable virtues,  I  might  be  justly  reckoned  among  the 
tardiest  and  the  unwillingest  of  them  that  praise  ye. 
Nevertheless,  there  being  three  principal  things,  without 
which  all  praising  is  but  courtship  and  flattery:  first,  when 
that  only  is  praised  which  is  solidly  worth  praise;  next, 
when  greatest  likelihoods  are  brought  that  such  things  are 
truly  and  really  in  those  persons  to  whom  they  are  ascribed; 
the  other,  when  he  who  praises,  by  showing  that  such  his 
actual  persuasion  is  of  whom  he  writes,  can  demonstrate 
that  he  flatters  not.  The  former  two  of  these  I  have  here- 
tofore endeavoured,  rescuing  the  employment  from  him 
who  went  about  to  impair  your  merits  with  a  trivial  and 
malignant  encomium;  the  latter  as  belonging  chiefly  to 
mine  own  acquittal,  that  whom  I  so  extolled  I  did  not  flatter, 
hath  been  reserved  opportunely  to  this  occasion.  For  he 
who  freely  magnifies  what  hath  been  nobly  done,  and  fears 
not  to  declare  as  freely  what  might  be  done  better,  gives 
ye  the  best  covenant  of  his  fidelity,  and  that  his  loyalest 
affection  and  his  hope  waits  on  your  proceedings.  His 
highest  praising  is  not  flattery,  and  his  plainest  advice  is  a 
kind  of  praising;  for  though  I  should  affirm  and  hold  by 
argument  that  it  would  fare  better  with  truth,  with  learn- 
ing, and  the  commonwealth,  if  one  of  your  published 
orders,  which  I  should  name,  were  called  in,  yet  at-  the 
same  time  it  could  not  but  much  redound  to  the  lustre 
of  your  mild  and  equal  Government,  when  as  private  per- 
sons are  hereby  animated  to  think  ye  better  pleased  with 
public  advice  than  other  statists  have  been  delighted  here- 
tofore with  public  flattery.  And  men  will  then  see  what 
difference  there  is  between  the  magnanimity  of  a  triennial 
Parliament  and  that  jealous  haughtiness  of  prelates  and 
cabin  counsellors  that  usurped  of  late,  when  as  they  shall 
observe  ye  in  the  midst  of  your  victories  and  successes 
more  gently  brooking  written  exceptions  against  a  voted 


AREOPAGITICA  IO3 

order  than  other  courts,  which  had  produced  nothing 
worth  memory  but  the  weak  ostentation  of  wealth,  would 
have  endured  the  least  signified  dislike  at  any  sudden  proc- 
lamation. If  I  should  thus  far  presume  upon  the  meek 
demeanour  of  your  civil  and  gentle  greatness,  Lords  and 
Commons,  as  what  your  published  order  hath  directly  said, 
that  to  gainsay,  I  might  defend  myself  with  ease,  if  any 
should  accuse  me  of  being  new  or  insolent,  did  they  but 
know  how  much  better  I  find  ye  esteem  it  to  imitate  the 
old  and  elegant  humanity  of  Greece  than  the  barbaric 
pride  of  a  Hunnish  and  Norwegian  stateliness.  And  out  of 
those  ages,  to  whose  polite  wisdom  and  letters  we  owe 
that  we  are  not  yet  Goths  and  Jutlanders,  I  could  name 
him  who  from  his  private  house  wrote  that  discourse  to 
the  Parliament  of  Athens,  that  persuades  them  to  change 
the  form  of  democracy  which  was  then  established.  Such 
honour  was  done  in  those  days  to  men  who  professed  the 
study  of  wisdom  and  eloquence,  not  only  in  their  own 
country,  but  in  other  lands,  that  cities  and  seignories  heard 
them  gladly  and  with  great  respect,  if  they  had  aught  in 
public  to  admonish  the  state.  Thus  did  Dion  Prusaeus,  a 
stranger  and  a  private  orator,  counsel  the  Rhodians  against 
a  former  edict;  and  I  abound  with  other  like  examples, 
which  to  set  here  would  be  superfluous.  But  if  from  the 
industry  of  a  life  wholly  dedicated  to  studious  labours,  and 
those  natural  endowments  haply  not  the  worst  for  two- 
and-fifty  degrees  of  northern  latitude,  so  much  must  be 
derogated  as  to  count  me  not  equal  to  any  of  those  who 
had  this  privilege,  I  would  obtain  to  be  thought  not  so 
inferior  as  yourselves  are  superior  to  the  most  of  them  who 
recived  their  counsel;  and  how  far  you  excel  them,  be 
assured,  Lords  and  Commons,  there  can  no  greater  testi- 
mony appear  than  when  your  prudent  spirit  acknowledges 
and  obeys  the  voice  of  reason  from  what  quarter  soever  it 
be  heard  speaking,  and  renders  ye  as  willing  to  repeal  any 
act  of  your  own  setting  forth  as  any  set  forth  by  your 
predecessors. 

If  ye  be  thus  resolved,  as  it  were  injury  to  think  ye 
were  not,  I  know  not  what  should  withhold  me  from  pre- 
senting ye  with  a  fit  instance  wherein  to  show  both  that 
love  of  truth  which  ye  eminently  profess,  and  that  upright- 


104 


MILTON 


ness  of  your  judgment  which  is  not  wont  to  be  partial  to 
yourselves,  by  judging  over  again  that  order  which  ye  have 
ordained  "  to  regulate  printing:  that  no  book,  pamphlet, 
or  paper  shall  be  henceforth  printed,  unless  the  same  be 
first  approved  and  licensed  by  such,"  or  at  least  one  of 
such  as  shall  be  thereto  appointed.  For  that  part  which 
preserves  justly  every  man's  copy  to  himself,  or  provides 
for  the  poor,  I  touch  not,  only  wish  they  be  not  made 
pretences  to  abuse  and  persecute  honest  and  painful  men, 
who  offend  not  in  either  of  these  particulars.  But  that 
other  clause  of  licensing  books,  which  we  thought  had  died 
with  his  brother  quadragesimal  and  matrimonial  when  the 
prelates  expired,  I  shall  now  attend  with  such  a  homily  as 
shall  lay  before  ye,  first  the  inventors  of  it  to  be  those 
whom  ye  will  be  loath  to  own;  next,  what  is  to  be  thought 
in  general  of  reading,  whatever  sort  the  books  be;  and 
that  this  order  avails  nothing  to  the  suppressing  of  scan- 
dalous, seditious,  and  libellous  books,  which  were  mainly 
intended  to  be  suppressed;  last,  that  it  will  be  primely  to 
the  discouragement  of  all  learning  and  the  stop  of  truth, 
not  only  by  the  disexercising  and  blunting  our  abilities  in 
what  we  know  already,  but  by  hindering  and  cropping  the 
discovery  that  might  be  yet  further  made  both  in  religious 
and  civil  wisdom. 

I  deny  not  but  that  it  is  of  greatest  concernment  in  the 
Church  and  commonwealth  to  have  a  vigilant  eye  how 
books  demean  themselves  as  well  as  men;  and  thereafter 
to  confine,  imprison,  and  do  sharpest  justice  on  them  as 
malefactors:  for  books  are  not  absolutely  dead  things,  but 
do  contain  a  potency  of  life  in  them  to  be  as  active  as 
that  soul  was  whose  progeny  they  are;  nay,  they  do  pre- 
serve as  in  a  vial  the  purest  efficacy  and  extraction  of  that 
living  intellect  that  bred  them.  I  know  they  are  as  lively 
and  as  vigorously  productive  as  those  fabulous  dragons' 
teeth;  and,  being  sown  up  and  down,  may  chance  to  spring 
up  armed  men.  And  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  unless  wari- 
ness be  used,  as  good  almost  kill  a  man  as  kill  a  good 
book;  who  kills  a  man  kills  a  reasonable  creature,  God's 
image,  but  he  who  destroys  a  good  book  kills  reason  itself, 
kills  the  image  of  God,  as  it  were,  in  the  eye.  Many  a 
man  lives  a  burden  to  the  earth,  but  a  good  book  is  the 


AREOPAGITICA  IC>5 

precious  life-blood  of  a  master  spirit,  embalmed  and  treas- 
ured up  on  purpose  to  a  life  beyond  life.  Tis  true,  no 
age  can  restore  a  life,  whereof  perhaps  there  is  no  great 
loss;  and  revolutions  of  ages  do  not  oft  recover  the  loss 
of  a  rejected  truth,  for  the  want  of  which  whole  nations 
fare  the  worse.  We  should  be  wary,  therefore,  what  per- 
secution we  raise  against  the  living  labours  of  public  men, 
how  we  spill  that  seasoned  life  of  man  preserved  and  stored 
up  in  books;  since  we  see  a  kind  of  homicide  may  be 
thus  committed,  sometimes  a  martyrdom,  and,  if  it  ex- 
tend to  the  whole  impression,  a  kind  of  massacre,  where- 
of the  execution  ends  not  in  the  slaying  of  an  elemental 
life,  but  strikes  at  that  ethereal  and  fifth  essence,  the 
breath  of  reason  itself,  slays  an  immortality  rather  than 
a  life.  But  lest  I  should  be  condemned  of  introducing 
license  while  I  oppose  licensing,  I  refuse  not  the  pains 
to  be  so  much  historical  as  will  serve  to  show  what 
hath  been  done  by  ancient  and  famous  commonwealths 
against  this  disorder,  till  the  very  time  that  this  project 
of  licensing  crept  out  of  the  Inquisition,  was  caught 
up  by  our  prelates,  and  hath  caught  some  of  our  pres- 
byters. 

In  Athens,  where  books  and  wits  were  ever  busier  than 
in  any  other  part  of  Greece,  I  find  but  only  two  sorts  of 
writings  which  the  magistrate  cared  to  take  notice  of:  those 
either  blasphemous  and  atheistical,  or  libellous.  Thus  the 
books  of  Protagoras  were  by  the  judges  of  "  Areopagus  " 
commanded  to  be  burned,  and  himself  banished  the  terri- 
tory, for  a  discourse  begun  with  his  confessing  not  to  know 
"  whether  there  were  gods,  or  whether  not."  And  against 
defaming,  it  was  decreed  that  none  should  be  traduced 
by  name,  as  was  the  manner  of  Vetus  Comcedia,  whereby 
we  may  guess  how  they  censured  libelling;  and  this  course 
was  quick  enough,  as  Cicero  writes,  to  quell  both  the 
desperate  wits  of  other  atheists,  and  the  open  way  of  de- 
faming, as  the  event  showed.  Of  other  sects  and  opinions,, 
though  tending  to  voluptuousness  and  the  denying  of 
Divine  Providence,  they  took  no  heed.  Therefore,  we  do 
not  read  that  either  Epicurus,  or  that  libertine  school  of 
Cyrene,  or  what  the  Cynic  impudence  uttered,  was  ever 
questioned  by  the  laws.  Neither  is  it  recorded  that  the 


106  MILTON 

writings  of  those  old  comedians  were  suppressed,  though 
the  acting  of  them  were  forbid;  and  that  Plato  commended 
the  reading  of  Aristophanes,  the  loosest  of  them  all,  to  his 
royal  scholar  Dionysius,  is  commonly  known,  and  may 
be  excused,  if  holy  Chrysostom,  as  is  reported,  nightly 
studied  so  much  the  same  author  and  had  the  art  to  cleanse 
a  scurrilous  vehemence  into  the  style  of  a  rousing  sermon. 
That  other  leading  city  of  Greece,  Lacedsemon,  consider- 
ing that  Lycurgus  their  lawgiver  was  so  addicted  to  ele- 
gant learning  as  to  have  been  the  first  that  brought  out 
of  Ionia  the  scattered  works  of  Homer,  and  sent  the  poet 
Thales  from  Crete  to  prepare  and  mollify  the  Spartan 
surliness  with  his  smooth  songs  and  odes,  the  better  to 
plant  among  them  law  and  civility,  it  is  to  be  wondered 
how  museless  and  unbookish  they  were,  minding  naught 
but  the  feats  of  war.  There  needed  no  licensing  of  books 
among  them,  for  they  disliked  all  but  their  own  laconic 
apophthegms,  and  took  a  slight  occasion  to  chase  Archilo- 
chus  out  of  their  city,  perhaps  for  composing  in  a  higher 
strain  than  their  own  soldierly  ballads  and  roundels  could 
reach  to;  or  if  it  were  for  his  broad  verses,  they  were  not 
therein  so  cautious,  but  they  were  as  dissolute  in  their  pro- 
miscuous conversing;  whence  Euripides  affirms,  in  "  An- 
dromache," that  their  women  were  all  unchaste.  Thus 
much  may  give  us  light  after  what  sort  books  were  pro- 
hibited among  the  Greeks.  The  Romans,  also,  for  many 
ages  trained  up  only  to  a  military  roughness,  resembling 
most  of  the  Lacedaemonian  guise,  knew  of  learning  little 
but  what  their  twelve  tables  and  the  Pontific  College  with 
their  augurs  and  flamens  taught  them  in  religion  and 
law,  so  unacquainted  with  other  learning  that  when  Car- 
neades  and  Critolaus,  with  the  Stoic  Diogenes,  coming 
ambassadors  to  Rome,  took  thereby  occasion  to  give  the 
city  a  taste  of  their  philosophy,  they  were  suspected  for 
seducers  by  no  less  a  man  than  Cato  the  Censor,  who 
moved  it  in  the  Senate  to  dismiss  them  speedily,  and  to 
banish  all  such  Attic  babblers  out  of  Italy.  But  Scipio  and 
others  of  the  noblest  senators  withstood  him  and  his  old 
Sabine  austerity;  honoured  and  admired  the  men;  and 
the  censor  himself  at  last  in  his  old  age  fell  to  the  study 
of  that  whereof  before  he  was  so  scrupulous.  And  yet 


AREOPAGITICA  IO7 

at  the  same  time  Naevius  and  Plautus,  the  first  Latin 
comedians,  had  filled  the  city  with  all  the  borrowed  scenes 
of  Menander  and  Philemon.  Then  began  to  be  considered 
there  also  what  was  to  be  done  to  libellous  books  and 
authors,  for  Naevius  was  quickly  cast  into  prison  for  his 
unbridled  pen,  and  released  by  the  tribunes  upon  his 
recantation.  We  read  also  that  libels  were  burned,  and 
the  makers  punished  by  Augustus.  The  like  severity  no 
doubt  was  used  if  aught  were  impiously  written  against 
their  esteemed  gods.  Except  in  these  two  points,  how 
the  world  went  in  books  the  magistrate  kept  no  reckoning. 
And,  therefore,  Lucretius  without  impeachment  versifies 
his  epicurism  to  Memmius,  and  had  the  honour  to  be  set 
forth  the  second  time  by  Cicero  so  great  a  father  of  the 
commonwealth,  although  himself  di'sputes  against  that 
opinion  in  his  own  writings.  Nor  was  the  satirical  sharp- 
ness or  naked  plainness  of  Lucilius,  or  Catullus,  or  Flaccus, 
by  any  order  prohibited.  And  for  matters  of  state,  the 
story  of  Titius  Livius,  though  it  extolled  that  part  which 
Pompey  held,  was  not  therefore  suppressed  by  Octavius 
Caesar  of  the  other  faction.  But  that  Naso  was  by  him 
banished  in  his  old  age  for  the  wanton  poems  of  his  youth 
was  but  a  mere  covert  of  state  over  some  secret  cause; 
and  besides  the  books  were  neither  banished  nor  called 
in.  From  hence  we  shall  meet  with  little  else  but 
tyranny  in  the  Roman  Empire,  that  we  may  not  mar- 
vel if  not  so  often  bad  as  good  books  were  silenced. 
I  shall  therefore  deem  to  have  been  large  enough  in 
producing  what  among  the  ancients  was  punishable  to 
write,  save  only  which,  all  other  arguments  were  free  to 
treat  on. 

By  this  time  the  emperors  were  become  Christians, 
whose  discipline  in  this  point  I  do  not  find  to  have  been 
more  severe  than  what  was  formerly  in  practice.  The 
books  of  those  whom  they  took  to  be  grand  heretics  were 
examined,  refuted,  and  condemned  in  the  General  Coun- 
cils; and  not  till  then  were  prohibited,  or  burned  by  au- 
thority of  the  emperor.  As  for  the  writings  of  heathen 
authors,  unless  they  were  plain  invectives  against  Chris- 
tianity, as  those  of  Porphyrius  and  Proclus,  they  met  with 
no  interdict  that  can  be  cited  till  about  the  year  400  in  a 


108  MILTON 

Carthaginian  council,  wherein  bishops  themselves  were 
forbid  to  read  the  books  of  Gentiles,  but  heresies  they 
might  read;  while  others  long  before  them,  on  the  con- 
trary, scrupled  more  the  books  of  heretics  than  of  Gentiles. 
And  that  the  primitive  councils  and  bishops  were  wont 
only  to  declare  what  books  were  not  commendable,  pass- 
ing no  further,  but  leaving  it  to  each  one's  conscience  to 
read  or  to  lay  by,  till  after  the  year  800,  is  observed 
already  by  Padre  Paolo,  the  great  unmasker  of  the 
Trentine  Council.  After  which  time  the  Popes  of  Rome, 
engrossing  what  they  pleased  of  political  rule  into  their 
own  hands,  extended  their  dominion  over  men's  eyes,  as 
they  had  before  over  their  judgments,  burning  and  pro- 
hibiting to  be  read  what  they  fancied  not;  yet  sparing  in 
their  censures,  and  the  books  not  many  which  they  so 
dealt  with,  till  Martin  V  by  his  bull  not  only  prohibited, 
but  was  the  first  that  excommunicated  the  reading  of 
heretical  books;  for  about  that  time  Wyclif  and  Huss 
growing  terrible,  were  they  who  first  drove  the  Papal 
court  to  a  stricter  policy  of  prohibiting;  which  course 
Leo  X  and  his  successors  followed,  until  the  Council 
'of  Trent  and  the  Spanish.  Inquisition  engendering  to- 
gether brought  forth  or  perfected  those  catalogues  and  ex- 
purging  indexes  that  rake  through  the  entrails  of  many 
an  old  good  author  with  a  violation  worse  than  any  could 
be  offered  to  his  tomb.  Nor  did  they  stay  in  matters 
heretical,  but  any  subject  that  was  not  to  their  palate  they 
either  condemned  in  a  prohibition,  or  had  it  straight  into 
the  new  purgatory  of  an  Index.  To  fill  up  the  measure 
of  encroachment,  their  last  invention  was  to  ordain  that 
no  book,  pamphlet,  or  paper  should  be  printed  (as  if  St. 
Peter  had  bequeathed  them  the  keys  of  the  press  also 
out  of  paradise)  unless  it  were  approved  and  licensed 
under  the  hands  of  two  or  three  glutton  friars.  For 
example : 

Let  the  Chancellor  Cini  be  pleased  to  see  if  in  this 
present  work  be  contained  aught  that  may  withstand  the 
printing. 

VINCENT  RABATTA, 

Vicar  of  Florence. 


AREOPAGITICA  IO9 

I  have  seen  this  present  work,  and  find  nothing  athwart 
the  Catholic  faith  and  good  manners.  In  witness  whereof 
I  have  given,  etc.  NICOLO  CINI, 

Chancellor  of  Florence. 

Attending  the  precedent  relation,  it  is  allowed  that  this 
present  work  of  Davanzati  may  be  printed. 

VINCENT  RABATTA,  etc. 

It  may  be  printed,  July  I5th. 

Friar  SIMON  MOMPEI  D'AMELIA, 
-  Chancellor  of  the  Holy  Office  in  Florence. 

Sure  they  have  a  conceit,  if  he  of  the  bottomless, pit 
had  not  long  since  broke  prison,  that  this  quadruple  ex- 
orcism would  bar  him  down.  I  fear  their  next  design  will 
be  to  get  into  their  custody  the  licensing  of  that  which  they 
say  Claudius  intended,  but  went  not  through  with.  Vouch- 
safe to  see  another  of  their  forms,  the  Roman  stamp: 

Imprimatur.  If  it  seem  good  to  the  reverend  Master 
of  the  Holy  Palace.  BELCASTRO, 

Vtceregent. 
Imprimatur. 

Friar  NICOLO  RODOLFI,  Master  of  the  Holy  Palace. 

Sometimes  five  imprimaturs  are  seen  together  dia- 
loguewise  in  the  piazza  of  one  title-page,  complimenting 
and  ducking  each  to  other  with  their  shaven  reverences, 
whether  the  author,  who  stands  by  in  perplexity  at  the  foot 
of  his  epistle,  shall  to  the  press  or  to  the  sponge.  These 
are  the  pretty  responsories,  these  are  the  dear  antiphonies 
that  so  bewitched  of  late  our  prelates  and  their  chaplains 
with  the  goodly  echo  they  made,  and  besotted  us  to  the 
gay  imitation  of  a  lordly  imprimatur,  one  from  Lambeth 
House,  another  from  the  west  end  of  Paul's;  so  apishly 
Romanizing  that  the  word  of  command  still  was  set  down 
in  Latin,  as  if  the  learned  grammatical  pen  that  wrote  it 
would  cast  no  ink  without  Latin;  or  perhaps,  as  they 
thought,  because  no  vulgar  tongue  was  worthy  to  express 
the  pure  conceit  of  an  imprimatur;  but  rather,  as  I  hope, 
for  that  our  English,  the  language  of  men  ever  famous 
8  . 


1 10  MILTON 

and  foremost  in  the  achievements  of  liberty,  will  not  easily 
find  servile  letters  enough  to  spell  such  a  dictatory  pre- 
sumption English.  And  thus  ye  have  the  inventors  and 
the  original  of  book-licensing  ripped  up,  and  drawn  as 
lineally  as  any  pedigree.  We  have  it  not,  that  can  be 
heard  of,  from  any  ancient  state,  or  polity,  or  church,  nor 
by  any  statute  left  us  by  our  ancestors,  elder  or  later;  nor 
from  the  modern  custom  of  any  reformed  city  or  church 
abroad;  but  from  the  most  antichristian  council,  and  the 
most  tyrannous  Inquisition  that  ever  inquired.  Till  then 
books  were  ever  as  freely  admitted  into  the  world  as  any 
other  birth;  the  issue  of  the  brain  was  no  more  stifled  than 
the  issue  of  the  womb;  no  envious  Juno  sat  cross-legged 
over  the  nativity  of  any  man's  intellectual  offspring;  but 
if  it  proved  a  monster,  who  denies  but  that  it  was  justly 
burned,  or  sunk  into  the  sea?  But  that  a  book,  in  worse 
condition  than  a  peccant  soul,  should  be  to  stand  before 
a  jury  ere  it  be  born  to  the  world,  and  undergo  yet  in 
darkness  the  judgment  of  Radamanth  and  his  colleagues, 
ere  it  can  pass  the  ferry  backward  into  light,  was  never 
heard  before,  till  that  mysterious  iniquity,  provoked  and 
troubled  at  the  first  entrance  of  reformation,  sought  out 
new  limboes  and  new  hells  wherein  they  might  include  our 
books  also  within  the  number  of  their  damned.  And  this 
was  the  rare  morsel  so  officiously  snatched  up  and  so  ill- 
favouredly  imitated  by  our  inquisiturient  bishops  and  the 
attendant  minorites  their  chaplains.  That  ye  like  not  now 
these  most  certain  authors  of  this  licensing  order,  and  that 
all  sinister  intention  was  far  distant  from  your  thoughts 
when  ye  were  importuned  the  passing  it  all  men  who  know 
the  integrity  of  your  actions,  and  how  ye  honour  truth, 
will  clear  ye  readily. 

But  some  will  say,  What  though  the  inventors  were 
bad,  the  thing  for  all  that  may  be  good?  It  may  be  so; 
yet  if  that  thing  be  no  such  deep  invention,  but  obvious 
and  easy  for  any  man  to  light  on,  and  yet  best  and  wisest 
commonwealths  through  all  ages  and  occasions  have  for- 
borne to  use  it,  and  falsest  seducers  and  oppressors  of 
men  were  the  first  who  took  it  up,  and  to  no  other  pur- 
pose but  to  obstruct  and  hinder  the  first  approach  of  refor- 
mation, I  am  of  those  who  believe  it  will  be  a  harder 


AREOPAGITICA  m 

alchemy  than  Lullius  ever  knew  to  sublimate  any  good  use 
out  of  such  an  invention.  Yet  this  only  is  what  I  request 
to  gain  from  this  reason,  that  it  may  be  held  a  dangerous 
and  suspicious  fruit,  as  certainly  it  deserves,  for  the  tree 
that  bore  it,  until  I  can  dissect  one  by  one  the  properties  it 
has.  But  I  have  first  to  finish  as  was  propounded,  what 
is  to  be  thought  in  general  of  reading  books,  whatever 
sort  they  be,  and  whether  be  more  the  benefit  or  the  harm 
that  thence  proceeds? 

Not  to  insist  upon  the  examples  of  Moses,  Daniel,  and 
Paul,  who  were  skilful  in  all  the  learning  of  the  Egyptians, 
Chaldeans,  and  Greeks,  which  could  not  probably  be  with- 
out reading  their  books  of  all  sorts,  in  Paul  especially,  who 
thought  it  no  defilement  to  insert  into  Holy  Scripture  the 
sentences  of  three  Greek  poets,  and  one  of  them  a  trage- 
dian, the  question  was  notwithstanding  sometimes  contro- 
verted among  the  primitive  doctors,  but  with  great  odds 
on  that  side  which  affirmed  it  both  lawful  and  profitable, 
as  was  then  evidently  perceived  when  Julian  the  Apostate 
and  subtlest  enemy  to  our  faith  made  a  decree  forbidding 
Christians  the  study  of  heathen  learning;  for,  said  he,  they 
wound  us  with  our  own  weapons,  and  with  our  own  arts 
and  sciences  they  overcome  us.  And,  indeed,  the  Chris- 
tians were  put  so  to  their  shifts  by  this  crafty  means,  and 
so  much  in  clanger  to  decline  into  all  ignorance,  that  the 
two  Apollinarii  were  fain,  as  a  man  may  say,  to  coin  all  the 
seven  liberal  sciences  out  of  the  Bible,  reducing  it  into 
divers  forms  of  orations,  poems,  dialogues,  even  to  the  cal- 
culating of  a  new  Christian  grammar.  But  saith  the  his- 
torian Socrates:  The  providence  of  God  provided  better 
than  the  industry  of  Apollinarius  and  his  son  by  taking 
away  that  illiterate  law  with  the  life  of  him  who  devised  it. 
So  great  an  injury  they  then  held  it  to  be  deprived  of  Hel- 
lenic learning,  and  thought  it  a  persecution  more  under- 
mining and  secretly  decaying  the  Church  than  the  open 
cruelty  of  Decius  or  Diocletian.  And  perhaps  it  was  with 
the  same  politic  drift  that  the  devil  whipped  St  Jerome 
in  a  lenten  dream  for  reading  Cicero;  or  else  it  was  a 
phantasm  bred  by  the  fever  which  had  then  seized  him. 
For  had  an  angel  been  his  disciplines  unless  it  were  for 
dwelling  too  much  upon  Ciceronianisms,  and  had  chastised 


112  MILTON 

the  reading,  not  the  vanity,  it  had  been  plainly  partial,  first, 
to  correct  him  for  grave  Cicero,  and  not  for  scurril  Plautus 
whom  he  confesses  to  have  been  reading  not  long  before; 
next,  to  correct  him  only,  and  let  so  many  more  ancient 
fathers  wax  old  in  those,  pleasant  and  florid  studies  with- 
out the  lash  of  such  a  tutoring  apparition;  insomuch  that 
Basil  teaches  how  some  good  use  may  be  made  of  "  Mar- 
gites,"  a  sportful  poem,  not  now  extant,  writ  by  Homer; 
and  why  not  then  of  "  Morgante,"  an  Italian  romance 
much  to  the  same  purpose?  But  if  it  be  agreed  we  shall 
be  tried  by  visions  there  is  a  vision  recorded  by  Eusebius 
far  ancienter  than  this  tale  of  Jerome  to  the  nun  Eusto- 
chium,  and  besides  has  nothing  of  a  fever  in  it.  Diony- 
sius  Alexandrinus  Was  about  the  year  240  a  person  of  great 
name  in  the  Church  for  piety  and  learning,  who  had  wont 
to  avail  himself  much  against  heretics  by  being  conversant 
in  their  books;  until  a  certain  Presbyter  laid  it  scrupu- 
lously to  his  conscience  how  he  durst  venture  himself 
among  those  defiling  volumes.  The  worthy  man,  loath  to 
give  offence,  fell  into  a  new  debate  with  himself  what  was 
to  be  thought,  when  suddenly  a  vision  sent  from  God — it 
is  his  own  epistle  that  so  avers  it — confirmed  him  in  these 
words:  "  Read  any  books  whatever  come  to  thy  hands,  for 
thou  art  sufficient  both  to  judge  aright  and  to  examine 
each  matter."  To  this  revelation  he  assented  the  sooner, 
as  he  confesses,  because  it  was  answerable  to  that  of  the 
Apostle  to  the  Thessalonians:  "  Prove  all  things;  hold  fast 
that  which  is  good."  And  he  might  have  added  another 
remarkable  saying  of  the  same  author,  "  To  the  pure  all 
things  are  pure,"  not  only  meats  and  drinks,  but  all  kind 
of  knowledge  whether  of  good  or  evil;  the  knowledge  can 
not  defile,  nor  consequently  the  books,  if  the  will  and  con- 
science be  not  defiled.  For  books  are  as  meats  and  viands 
are,  some  of  good,  some  of  evil  substance;  and  yet  God  in 
that  unapocryphal  vision  said,  without  exception,  "  Rise, 
Peter,  kill  and  eat,"  leaving  the  choice  to  each  man's  dis- 
cretion. Wholesome  meats  to  a  vitiated  stomach  differ 
little  or  nothing  from  unwholesome;  and  best  books  to  a 
naughty  mind  are  not  unappliable  to  occasions  of  evil. 
Bad  meats  will  scarce  breed  good  nourishment  in  the 
healthiest  concoction;  but  herein  the  difference  is  of  bad 


AREOPAGITICA  II3 

books,  that  they  to  a  discreet  and  judicious  reader  serve  in 
many  respects  to  discover,  to  confute,  to  forewarn,  and 
to  illustrate.  Whereof  what  better  witness  can  ye  expect 
I  should  produce  than  one  of  your  own  now  sitting  in  Par- 
liament, the  chief  of  learned  men  reputed  in  this  land,  Mr. 
Selden,  whose  volume  of  natural  and  national  laws  proves, 
not  only  by  great  authorities  brought  together,  but  by  ex- 
quisite reasons  and  theorems  almost  mathematically  de- 
monstrative, that  all  opinions,  yea,  errors,  known,  read,  and 
collated,  are  of  main  service  and  assistance  toward  the 
speedy  attainment  of  what  is  truest.  I  conceive,  therefore, 
that  when  God  did  enlarge  the  universal  diet  of  man's  body, 
saving  ever  the  rules  of  temperance,  he  then  also,  as  be- 
fore, left  arbitrary  the  dieting  and  repasting  of  our  minds; 
as  wherein  every  mature  man  might  have  to  exercise  his 
own  leading  capacity.  How  great  a  virtue  is  temperance, 
how  much  of  moment  through  the  whole  life  of  man !  Yet 
God  commits  the  managing  so  great  a  trust,  without  par- 
ticular law  or  prescription,  wholly  to  the  demeanour  of 
every  grown  man.  And  therefore,  when  He  himself  tabled 
the  Jews  from  heaven,  that  omer  which  was  every  man's 
daily  portion  of  manna  is  computed  to  have  been  more 
than  might  have  well  sufficed  the  heartiest  feeder  thrice  as 
many  meals.  For  those  actions,  which  enter  into  a  man 
rather  than  issue  out  of  him  and  therefore  defile  not,  God 
uses  not  to  captivate  under  a  perpetual  childhood  of  pre- 
scription, but  trusts  him  with  the  gift  of  reason  to  be  his 
own  chooser;  there  were  but  little  work  left  for  preach- 
ing if  law  and  compulsion  should  grow  so  fast  upon  those 
things  which  heretofore  were  governed  only  by  exhorta- 
tion. Solomon  informs  us  that  much  reading  is  a  weari- 
ness to  the  flesh,  but  neither  he  nor  other  inspired  author 
tells  us  that  such  or  such  reading  is  unlawful;  yet  cer- 
tainly had  God  thought  good  to  limit  us  herein,  it  had 
been  much  more  expedient  to  have  told  us  what  was  un- 
lawful than  what  was  wearisome.  As  for  the  burning  of 
those  Ephesian  books  by  St.  Paul's  converts,  it  is  replied 
the  books  were  magic,  the  Syriac  so  renders  them.  It  was 
a  private  act,  a  voluntary  act,  and  leaves  us  to  a  voluntary 
imitation;  the  men  in  remorse  burned  those  books  which 
were  their  own;  the  magistrate  by  this  example  is  not  ap- 


MILTON 

pointed;  these  men  practised  the  books,  another  might  per- 
haps have  read  them  in  some  sort  usefully.  Good  and  evil 
we  know  in  the  field  of  this  world  grow  up  together  almost 
inseparably,  and  the  knowledge  of  good  is  so  involved  and 
interwoven  with  the  knowledge  of  evil,  and  in  so  many 
cunning  resemblances  hardly  to  be  discerned,  that  those 
confused  seeds,  which  were  imposed  on  Psyche  as  an  in- 
cessant labour  to  cull  out  and  sort  asunder,  were  not  more 
intermixed.  It  was  from  out  the  rind  of  one  apple  tasted 
that  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil  as  two  twins  cleav- 
ing together  leaped  forth  into  the  world.  And  perhaps  this 
is  that  doom  which  Adam  fell  into  of  knowing  good  and 
evil;  that  is  to  say,  of  knowing  good  by  evil.  As,  therefore, 
the  state  of  man  now  is,  what  wisdom  can  there  be  to 
choose,  what  continence  to  forbear,  without  the  knowledge 
of  evil?  He  that  can  apprehend  and  consider  vice  with 
all  her  baits  and  seeming  pleasures,  and  yet  abstain,  and 
yet  distinguish,  and  yet  prefer  that  which  is  truly  better, 
he  is  the  true  warfaring  Christian.  I  can  not  praise  a 
fugitive  and  cloistered  virtue,  unexercised  and  unbreathed, 
that  never  sallies  out  and  sees  her  adversary,  but  slinks 
out  of  the  race,  where  that  immortal  garland  is  to  be 
run  for  not  without  dust  and  heat.  Assuredly  we  bring 
not  innocence  into  the  world,  we  bring  impurity  much 
rather;  that  which  purifies  us  is  trial,  and  trial  is  by  what 
is  contrary.  That  virtue,  therefore,  which  is  but  a  young- 
ling in  the  contemplation  of  evil,  and  knows  not  the  utmost 
that  vice  promises  to  her  followers,  and  rejects  it,  is  but  a 
blank  virtue,  not  a  pure;  her  whiteness  is  but  an  excre- 
mental  whiteness,  which  was  the  reason  why  our  sage  and 
serious  poet  Spenser,  whom  I  dare  be  known  to  think  a 
better  teacher  than  Scotus  or  Aquinas,  describing  true  tem- 
perance under  the  person  of  Guyon,  brings  him  in  with 
his  palmer  through  the  cave  of  Mammon  and  the  bower 
of  earthly  bliss,  that  he  might  see  and  know,  and  yet  ab- 
stain. Since,  therefore,  the  knowledge  and  survey  of  vice 
is  in  this  world  so  necessary  to  the  constituting  of  human 
virtue,  and  the  scanning  of  error  to  the  confirmation  of 
truth,  how  can  we  more  safely  and  with  less  danger  scout 
into  the  regions  of  sin  and  falsity  than  by  reading  all  man- 
ner of  tractates,  and  hearing  all  manner  of  reason?  And 


AREOPAGITICA  Hj 

this  is  the  benefit  which  may  be  had  of  books  promiscu- 
ously read.  But  of  the  harm  that  may  result  hence  three 
kinds  are  usually  reckoned:  First  is  feared  the  infection 
that  may  spread;  but  then  all  human  learning  and  con- 
troversy in  religious  points  must  remove  out  of  the  world, 
yea,  the  Bible  itself,  for  that  ofttimes  relates  blasphemy 
not  nicely — it  describes  the  carnal  sense  of  wicked  men  not 
unelegantly,  it  brings  in  holiest  men  passionately  murmur- 
ing against  Providence  through  all  the  arguments  of 
Epicurus;  in  other  great  disputes  it  answers  dubiously  and 
darkly  to  the  common  reader;  and  ask  a  Talmudist  what 
ails  the  modesty  of  his  marginal  Keri,  that  Moses  and  all 
the  prophets  can  not  persuade  him  to  pronounce  the 
textual  Chetiv.  For  these  causes  we  all  know  the  Bible 
itself  put  by  the  Papist  into  the  first  rank  of  prohibited 
books.  The  ancientest  Fathers  must  be  next  removed,  as 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  and  that  Eusebian  book  of  Evan- 
gelic preparation,  transmitting  our  ears  through  a  hoard 
of  heathenish  obscenities  to  receive  the  Gospel.  Who  finds 
not  that  Irenaeus,  Epiphanius,  Jerome,  and  others  discover 
more  heresies  than  they  well  confute,  and  that  oft  for  heresy 
which  is  the  truer  opinion?  Nor  boots  it  to  say  for  these, 
and  all  the  heathen  writers  of  greatest  infection,  if  it  must 
be  thought  so,  with  whom  is  bound  up,  the  life  of  human 
learning,  that  they  wrote  in  an  unknown  tongue,  so  long 
as  we  are  sure  those  languages  are  known  as  well  to  the 
worst  of  men,  who  are  both  most  able  and  most  diligent 
to  instil  the  poison  they  suck,  first  into  the  courts  of 
princes,  acquainting  them  with  the  choicest  delights  and 
criticisms  of  sin — as  perhaps  did  that  Petronius  whom 
Nero  called  his  Arbiter,  the  master  of  his  revels;  and  that 
notorious  ribald  of  Arezzo,  dreaded,  and  yet  dear  to  the 
Italian  courtiers.  I  name  not  him,  for  posterity's  sake, 
whom  Harry  VIII  named  in  merriment  his  Vicar  of 
Hell.  By  which  compendious  way  all  the  contagion  that 
foreign  books  can  infuse  will  find  a  passage  to  the  people 
far  easier  and  shorter  than  an  Indian  voyage,  though  it 
could  be  sailed  either  by  the  north  of  Cathay  eastward  or 
of  Canada  westward,  while  our  Spanish  licensing  gags  the 
English  press  never  so  severely.  But,  on  the  other  side, 
that  infection  which  is  from  books  of  controversy  in  re- 


Il6  MILTON 

ligion  is  more  doubtful  and  dangerous  to  the  learned  than 
to  the  ignorant;  and  yet  those  books  must  be  permitted 
untouched  by  the  licenser.  It  will  be  hard  to  instance 
where  any  ignorant  man  hath  been  ever  seduced  by  Papisti- 
cal book  in  English,  unless  it  were  commended  and  ex- 
pounded to  him  by  some  of  that  clergy;  and,  indeed,  all 
such  tractates,  whether  false  or  true,  are  as  the  prophecy 
of  Isaiah  was  to  the  eunuch,  not  to  be  "  understood  without 
a  guide."  But  of  our  priests  and  doctors  how  many  have 
been  corrupted  by  studying  the  comments  of  Jesuits  and 
Sorbonnists,  and  how  fast  they  could  transfuse  that  cor- 
ruption into  the  people  our  experience  is  both  late  and  sad. 
It  is  not  forgot  since  the  acute  and  distinct  Arminius  was 
perverted  merely  by  the  perusing  of  a  nameless  discourse 
written  at  Delft,  which  at  first  he  took  in  hand  to  confute. 
Seeing,  therefore,  that  those  books,  and  those  in  great 
abundance,  which  are  likeliest  to  taint  both  life  and  doc- 
trine, can  not  be  suppressed  without  the  fall  of  learning 
and  of  all  ability  in  disputation;  and  that  these  books  of 
either  sort  are  most  and  soonest  catching  to  the  learned, 
from  whom  to  the  common  people  whatever  is  heretical  or 
dissolute  may  quickly  be  conveyed;  and  that  evil  manners 
are  as  perfectly  learned  without  books  a  thousand  other 
ways  which  can  not  be  stopped,  and  evil  doctrine  not  with 
books  can  propagate,  except  a  teacher  guide,  which  he 
might  also  do  without  writing  and  so  beyond  prohibiting, 
I  am  not  able  to  unfold  how  this  cautelous  enterprise  of 
licensing  can  be  exempted  from  the  number  of  vain  and 
impossible  attempts.  And  he  who  were  pleasantly  dis- 
posed could  not  well  avoid  to  liken  it  to  the  exploit  of  that 
gallant  man  who  thought  to  pound  up  the  crows  by  shut- 
ting his  park  gate.  Besides  another  inconvenience,  if 
learned  men  be  the  first  receivers  out  of  books  and  dis- 
preaders  both  of  vice  and  error,  how  shall  the  licensers 
themselves  be  confided  in,  unless  we  can  confer  upon  them, 
or  they  assume  to  themselves,  above  all  others  in  the  land, 
the  grace  of  infallibility  and  uncorruptedness?  And  again, 
if  it  be  true  that  a  wise  man  like  a  good  refiner  can  gather, 
gold  out  of  the  drossiest  volume,  and  that  a  fool  will  be 
a  fool  with  the  best  book,  yea,  or  without  book,  there  is 
no  reason  that  we  should  deprive  a  wise  man  of  any  ad- 


AREOPAGITICA  II7 

vantage  to  his  wisdom,  while  we  seek  to  restrain  from  a  fool 
that  which  being  restrained  will  be  no  hindrance  to  his 
folly.  For  if  there  should  be  so  much  exactness  always 
used  to  keep  that  from  him  which  is  unfit  for  his  reading 
we  should,  in  the  judgment  of  Aristotle  not  only,  but  of 
Solomon  and  of  our  Saviour,  not  vouchsafe  him  good  pre- 
cepts, and  by  consequence  not  willingly  admit  him  to  good 
books,  as  being  certain  that  a  wise  man  will  make  better 
use  of  an  idle  pamphlet  than  a  fool  will  do  of  sacred  Scrip- 
ture. 'Tis  next  alleged  we  must  not  expose  ourselves  to 
temptations  without  necessity,  and  next  to  that,  not  em- 
ploy our  time  in  vain  things.  To  both  these  objections  one 
answer  will  serve,  out  of  the  grounds  already  laid,  that  to 
all  men  such  books  are  not  temptations  nor  vanities,  but 
useful  drugs  and  materials  wherewith  to  temper  and  com- 
pose effective  and  strong  medicines,  which  man's  life  can 
not  want.  The  rest,  as  children  and  childish  men,  who 
have  not  the  art  to  qualify  and  prepare  these  working 
minerals,  well  may  be  exhorted  to  forbear,  but  hindered 
forcibly  they  can  not  be  by  all  the  licensing  that  sainted 
Inquisition  could  ever  yet  contrive,  which  is  what  I  prom- 
ised to  deliver  next:  that  this  order  of  licensing  conduces 
nothing  to  the  end  for  which  it  was  framed,  and  hath  almost 
prevented  me  by  being  clear  already  while  thus  much  hath 
been  explaining.  See  the  ingenuity  of  Truth,  who,  when 
she  gets  a  free  and  willing  hand,  opens  herself  faster  than 
the  pace  of  method  and  discourse  can  overtake  her.  It  was 
the  task  which  I  began  with,  to  show  that  no  nation  or 
well-instituted  state,  if  they  valued  books  at  all,  did  ever 
use  this  way  of  licensing;  and  it  might  be  answered  that 
this  is  a  piece  of  prudence  lately  discovered;  to  which  I 
return  that,  as  it  was  a  thing  slight  and  obvious  to  think 
on,  so  if  it  had  been  difficult  to  find  out  there  wanted  not 
among  them  long  since  who  suggested  such  a  course, 
which  they  not  following,  leave  us  a  pattern  of  their  judg- 
ment, that  it  was  not  the  not  knowing,  but  the  not  ap- 
proving, which  was  the  cause  of  their  not  using  it.  Plato, 
a  man  of  high  authority  indeed,  but  least  of  all  for  his 
commonwealth,  in  the  book  of  his  "  Laws,"  which  no  city 
ever  yet  received,  fed  his  fancy  with  making  many  edicts 
to  his  airy  burgomasters  which  they  who  otherwise  admire 


H8  MILTON 

him  wish  had  been  rather  buried  and  excused  in  the  genial 
cups  of  an  academic  night-sitting;  by  which  laws  he  seems 
to  tolerate  no  kind  of  learning  but  by  unalterable  decree, 
consisting  most  of  practical  traditions,  to  the  attainment 
whereof  a  library  of  smaller  bulk  than  his  own  "  Dialogues  " 
would  be  abundant.  And  there  also  enacts  that  no  poet 
should  so  much  as  read  to  any  private  man  what  he  had 
written  until  the  judges  and  law-keepers  had  seen  it  and 
allowed  it.  But  that  Plato  meant  this  law  peculiarly  to  that 
commonwealth  which  he  had  imagined,  and  to  no  other,  is 
evident.  Why  was  he  not  else  a  lawgiver  to  himself,  but 
a  transgressor,  and  to  be  expelled  by  his  own  magistrates, 
both  for  the  wanton  epigrams  and  dialogues  which  he 
made,  and  his  perpetual  reading  of  Sophron  Mimus  and 
Aristophanes,  books  of  grossest  infamy,  and  also  for  com- 
mending the  latter  of  them,  though  he  were  the  malicious 
libeller  of  his  chief  friends,  to  be  read  by  the  tyrant  Diony- 
sius,  who  had  little  need  of  such  trash  to  spend  his  time 
on?  But  that  he  knew  this  licensing  of  poems  had  refer- 
ence and  dependence  to  many  other  provisos  there  set 
down  in  his  fancied  republic,  which  in  this  world  could 
have  no  place;  and  so  neither  he  himself  nor  any  magis- 
trate or  city  ever  imitated  that  course,  which,  taken  apart 
from  those  other  collateral  injunctions,  must  needs  be  vain 
and  fruitless.  For  if  they  fell  upon  one  kind  of  strictness, 
unless  their  care  were  equal  to  regulate  all  other  things  of 
like  aptness  to  corrupt  the  mind,  that  single  endeavour 
they  knew  would  be  but  a  fond  labour;  to  shut  and  fortify 
one  gate  against  corruption,  and  be  necessitated  to  leave 
others  round  about  wide  open.  If  we  think  to  regulate 
printing,  thereby  to  rectify  manners,  we  must  regulate  all 
recreations  and  pastimes,  all  that  is  delightful  to  man.  No 
music  must  be  heard,  no  song  be  set  or  sung,  but  what  is 
grave  and  Doric.  There  must  be  licensing  dancers,  that 
no  gesture,  motion,  or  deportment  be  taught  our  youth  but 
what  by  their  allowance  shall  be  thought  honest;  for  such 
Plato  was  provided  of.  It  will  ask  more  than  the  work  of 
twenty  licensers  to  examine  all  the  lutes,  the  violins,  and 
the  guitars  in  every  house;  they  must  not  be  suffered  to 
prattle  as  they  do,  but  must  be  licensed  what  they  may  say. 
And  who  shall  silence  all  the  airs  and  madrigals  that  whis- 


AREOPAGITICA 

per  softness  in  chambers?  The  windows  also,  and  the 
balconies,  must  be  thought  on;  there  are  shrewd  books 
with  dangerous  frontispieces  set  to  sale;  who  shall  prohibit 
them?  Shall  twenty  licensers?  The  villages  also  must 
have  their  visitors  to  inquire  what  lectures  the  bagpipe  and 
the  rebec  reads,  even  to  the  ballatry  and  the  gamut  of  every 
municipal  fiddler,  for  these  are  the  countryman's  Arcadias 
and  his  Montemayors.  Next,  what  more  national  corrup- 
tion, for  which  England  hears  ill  abroad,  than  household 
gluttony?  Who  shall  be  the  rectors  of  our  daily  rioting? 
and  what  shall  be  done  to  inhibit  the  multitudes  that  fre- 
quent those  houses  where  drunkenness  is  sold  and  har- 
boured? Our  garments  also  should  be  referred  to  the 
licensing  of  some  more  sober  work-masters  to  see  them 
cut  into  a  less  wanton  garb.  Who  shall  regulate  all  the 
mixed  conversation  of  our  youth,  male  and  female  to- 
gether, as  is  the  fashion  of  this  country?  who  shall  still 
appoint  what  shall  be  discoursed,  what  presumed,  and  no 
further?  Lastly,  who  shall  forbid  and  separate  all  idle 
resort,  all  evil  company?  These  things  will  be,  and  must 
be;  but  how  they  shall  be  less  hurtful,  how  less  enticing, 
herein  consists  the  grave  and  governing  wisdom  of  a  state. 
To  sequester  out  of  the  world  into  Atlantic  and  Utopian 
polities  which  never  can  be  drawn  into  use  will  not  mend 
our  condition;  but  to  ordain  wisely  as  in  this  world  of  evil, 
in  the  midst  whereof  God  hath  placed  us  unavoidably.  Nor 
is  it  Plato's  licensing  of  books  will  do  this,  which  neces- 
sarily pulls  along  with  it  so  many  other  kinds  of  licensing, 
as  will  make  us  all  both  ridiculous  and  weary,  and  yet 
frustrate;  but  those  unwritten,  or  at  least  unconstraining 
laws  of  virtuous  education,  religious  and  civil  nurture, 
which  Plato  there  mentions  as  the  bonds  and  ligaments  of 
the  commonwealth,  the  pillars  and  the  sustainers  of  every 
written  statute;  these  they  be  which  will  bear  chief  sway  in 
such  matters  as  these,  when  all  licensing  will  be  easily 
eluded.  Impunity  and  remissness,  for  certain,  are  the  bane 
of  a  commonwealth;  but  here  the  great  art  lies  to  discern 
in  what  the  law  is  to  bid  restraint  and  punishment,  and  in 
what  things  persuasion  only  is  to  work.  If  every  action 
which  is  good  or  evil  in  man  at  ripe  years  were  to  be 
under  pittance  and  prescription  and  compulsion,  what  were 


120  MILTON 

virtue  but  a  name,  what  praise  could  be  then  due  to  well- 
doing, what  gramercy  to  be  sober,  just,  or  continent? 
Many  there  be  that  complain  of  Divine  Providence  for 
suffering  Adam  to  transgress.  Foolish  tongues!  When 
God  gave  him  reason  he  gave  him  freedom  to  choose,  for 
reason  is  but  choosing;  he  had  been  else  a  mere  artificial 
Adam,  such  an  Adam  as  he  is  in  the  motions.  We  our- 
selves esteem  not  of  that  obedience  or  love  or  gift  which 
is  of  force:  God  therefore  left  him  free,  set  before  him  a 
provoking  object,  ever  almost  in  his  eyes;  herein  consisted 
his  merit,  herein  the  right  of  his  reward,  the  praise  of  his 
abstinence.  Wherefore  did  he  create  passions  within  us, 
pleasures  round  about  us,  but  that  these  rightly  tempered 
are  the  very  ingredients  of  virtue?  They  are  not  skilful 
considerers  of  human  things  who  imagine  to  remove  sin 
by  removing  the  matter  of  sin;  for,  besides  that  it  is  a  huge 
heap  increasing  under  the  very  act  of  diminishing,  though 
some  part  of  it  may  for  a  time  be  withdrawn  from  some 
persons,  it  can  not  from  all  in  such  a  universal  thing  as 
books  are;  and  when  this  is  done,  yet  the  sin  remains  en- 
tire. Though  ye  take  from  a  covetous  man  all  his  treasure, 
he  has  yet  one  jewel  left:  ye  can  not  bereave  him  of  his 
covetousness.  Banish  all  objects  of  lust,  shut  up  all  youth 
into  the  severest  discipline  that  can  be  exercised  in  any 
hermitage,  ye  can  not  make  them  chaste  that  came  not 
thither  so;  such  great  care  and  wisdom  is  required  to  the 
right  managing  of  this  point.  Suppose  we  could  expel  sin 
by  this  means:  look  how  much  we  thus  expel  of  sin,  so 
much  we  expel  of  virtue,  for  the  matter  of  them  both  is 
the  same;  remove  that,  and  ye  remove  them  both  alike. 
This  justifies  the  high  providence  of  God,  who  though  he 
command  us  temperance,  justice,  continence,  yet  pours  out 
before  us  even  to  a  profuseness  all  desirable  things,  and 
gives  us  minds  that  can  wander  beyond  all  limit  and  satiety. 
Why  should  we  then  affect  a  rigour  contrary  to  the  manner 
of  God  and  of  Nature,  by  abridging  or  scanting  those 
means  which  books  freely  permitted  are,  both  to  the  trial 
of  virtue  and  the  exercise  of  truth.  It  would  be  better  done 
to  learn  that  the  law  must  needs  be  frivolous  which  goes 
to  restrain  things  uncertainly  and  yet  equally  working  to 
good  and  to  evil.  And  were  I  the  chooser,  a  dram  of 


AREOPAGITICA  I2I 

well-doing  should  be  preferred  before  many  times  as  much 
the  forcible  hindrance  of  evil-doing.  For  God  sure  esteems 
the  growth  and  completing  of  one  virtuous  person  more 
than  the  restraint  of  ten  vicious.  And  albeit  whatever  thing 
we  hear  or  see,  sitting,  walking,  travelling,  or  conversing, 
may  be  fitly  called  our  book,  and  is  of  the  same  effect  that 
writings  are,  yet  grant  the  thing  to  be  prohibited  were  only 
books,  it  appears  that  this  order  hitherto  is  far  insufficient 
to  the  end  which  it  intends.  Do  we  not  see,  not  once  or 
oftener,  but  weekly,  that  continued  court-libel  against  the 
Parliament  and  city,  printed,  as  the  wet  sheets  can  witness, 
and  dispersed  among  us  for  all  that  licensing  can  do?  Yet 
this  is  the  prime  service  a  man  would  think,  wherein  this 
order  should  give  proof  of  itself.  If  it  were  executed,  you'll 
say.  But  certain,  if  execution  be  remiss  or  blindfold  now 
and  in  this  particular,  what  will  it  be  hereafter  and  in  other 
books?  If,  then,  the  order  shall  not  be  vain  and  frustrate, 
behold  a  new  labour,  Lords  and  Commons!  Ye  must 
repeal  and  proscribe  all  scandalous  and  unlicensed  books 
already  printed  and  divulged,  after  ye  have  drawn  them 
up  into  a  list,  that  all  may  know  which  are  condemned 
and  which  not,  and  ordain  that  no  foreign  books  be  de- 
livered out  of  custody  till  they  have  been  read  over.  This 
office  will  require  the  whole  time  of  not  a  few  overseers, 
and  those  no  vulgar  men.  There  be  also  books  which  are 
partly  useful  and  excellent,  partly  culpable  and  pernicious; 
this  work  will  ask  as  many  more  officials  to  make  expur- 
gations and  expunctions,  that  the  commonwealth  of  learn- 
ing be  not  damnified.  In  fine,  when  the  multitude  of  books 
increase  upon  their  hands,  ye  must  be  fain  to  catalogue  all 
those  printers  who  are  found  frequently  offending,  and  for- 
bid the  importation  of  their  whole  suspected  typography. 
In  a  word,  that  this  your  order  may  be  exact,  and  not 
deficient,  ye  must  reform  it  perfectly  according  to  the 
model  of  Trent  and  Seville,  which  I  know  ye  abhor  to  do. 
Yet  though  ye  should  condescend  to  this,  which  God  for- 
bid, the  order  still  would  be  but  fruitless  and  defective  to 
'that  end  whereto  ye  meant  it.  If  to  prevent  sects  and 
schisms,  who  is  so  unread  or  so  uncatechised  in  story  that 
hath  not  heard  of  many  sects  refusing  books  as  a  hindrance, 
and  preserving  their  doctrine  unmixed  for  many  ages  only 


122  MILTON 

by  unwritten  traditions?  The  Christian  faith,  for  that 
was  once  a  schism,  is  not  unknown  to  have  spread  all  over 
Asia  ere  any  Gospel  or  Epistle  was  seen  in  writing. 
If  the  amendment  of  manners  be  aimed  at,  look  into 
Italy  and  Spain,  whether  those  places  be  one  scruple 
the  better,  the  honester,  the  wiser,  the  chaster,  since  all 
the  inquisitional  rigour  that  hath  been  executed  upon 
books. 

Another  reason  whereby  to  make  it  plain  that  this 
order  will  miss  the  end  it  seeks,  consider  by  the  quality 
which  ought  to  be  in  every  licenser.  It  can  not  be  denied 
but  that  he  who  is  made  judge  to  sit  upon  the  birth  or 
death  of  books,  whether  they  may  be  wafted  into  this 
world  or  not,  had  need  to  be  a  man  above  the  common 
measure,  both  studious,  learned,  and  judicious;  there  may 
be  else  no  mean  mistakes  in  the  censure  of  what  is  passable 
or  not,  which  is  also  no  mean  injury.  If  he  be  of  such 
worth  as  behooves  him,  there  can  not  be  a  more  tedious 
and  unpleasing  journey-work,  a  greater  loss  of  time  levied 
upon  his  head,  than  to  be  made  the  perpetual  reader  of 
unchosen  books  and  pamphlets,  ofttimes  huge  volumes. 
There  is  no  book  that  is  acceptable  unless  at  certain  sea- 
sons; but  to  be  enjoined  the  reading  of  that  at  all  times, 
and  in  a  hand  scarce  legible,  whereof  three  pages  would  not 
down  at  any  time  in  the  fairest  print,  is  an  imposition 
which  I  can  not  believe  how  he  that  values  time  and  his 
own  studies,  or  is  but  of  a  sensible  nostril,  should  be  able 
to  endure.  In  this  one  thing  I  crave  leave  of  the  present 
licensers  to  be  pardoned  for  so  thinking,  who  doubtless 
took  this  office  up  looking  on  it  through  their  obedience 
to  the  Parliament,  whose  command  perhaps  made  all  things 
seem  easy  and  unlaborious  to  them;  but  that  this  short 
trial  hath  wearied  them  out  already,  their  own  expressions 
and  excuses  to  them  who  make  so  many  journeys  to  solicit 
their  license  are  testimony  enough.  Seeing,  therefore, 
those  who  now  possess  the  employment  by  all  evident 
signs  wish  themselves  well  rid  of  it,  and  that  no  man 
of  worth,  none  that  is  not  a  plain  unthrift  of  his  own 
hours,  is  ever  likely  to  succeed  them  except  he  mean  to 
put  himself  to  the  salary  of  a  press  correcter,  we  may 
easily  foresee  what  kind  of  licensers  we  are  to  expect 


AREOPAGITICA  ^3 

hereafter,  either  ignorant,  imperious,  and  remiss,  or  basely 
pecuniary.  This  is  what  I  had  to  show  wherein  this 
order  can  not  conduce  to  that  end  whereof  it  bears  the 
intention. 

I  lastly  proceed  from  the  no  good  it  can  do  to  the 
manifest  hurt  it  causes,  in  being  first  the  greatest  discour- 
agement and  affront  that  can  be  offered  to  learning  and 
to  learned  men.  It  was  the  complaint  and  lamentation  of 
prelates  upon  every  least  breath  of  a  motion  to  remove 
pluralities  and  distribute  more  equally  church  revenues, 
that  then  all  learning  would  be  forever  dashed  and  discour- 
aged. But  as  for  that  opinion,  I  never  found  cause  to  think 
that  the  tenth  part  of  learning  stood  or  fell  with  the  clergy, 
nor  could  I  ever  but  hold  it  for  a  sordid  and  unworthy 
speech  of  any  churchman  who  had  a  competency  left  him. 
If,  therefore,  ye  be  loath  to  dishearten  utterly  and  discon- 
tent, not  the  mercenary  crew  of  false  pretenders  to  learn- 
ing, but  the  free  and  ingenuous  sort  of  such  as  evidently 
were  born  to  study  and  love  learning  for  itself,  not  for 
lucre  or  any  other  end  but  the  service  of  God  and  of  truth, 
and  perhaps  that  lasting  fame  and  perpetuity  of  praise 
which  God  and  good  men  have  consented  shall  be  the  re- 
ward of  those  whose  published  labours  advance  the  good 
of  mankind,  then  know,  that  so  far  to  distrust  the  judg- 
ment and  the  honesty  of  one  who  hath  but  a  common 
repute  in  learning  and  never  yet  offended,  as  not  to  count 
him  fit  to  print  his  mind  without  a  tutor  and  examiner,  lest 
he  should  drop  a  schism  or  something  of  corruption,  is  the 
greatest  displeasure  and  indignity  to  a  free  and  knowing 
spirit  that  can  be  put  upon  him.  What  advantage  is  it  to 
be  a  man  over  it  is  to  be  a  boy  at  school,  if  we  have  only 
escaped  the  ferule  to  come  under  the  fescue  of  an  im- 
primatur? if  serious  and  elaborate  writings,  as  if  they  were 
no  more  than  the  theme  of  a  grammar  lad  under  his  peda- 
gogue, must  not  be  uttered  without  the  cursory  eyes  of  a 
temporizing  and  extemporizing  licenser?  He  who  is  not 
trusted  with  his  own  actions,  his  drift  not  being  known  to 
be  evil,  and  standing  to  the  hazard  of  law  and  penalty,  has 
no  great  argument  to  think  himself  reputed  in  the  com- 
monwealth wherein  he  was  born  for  other  than  a  fool  or  a 
foreigner.  When  a  man  writes  to  the  world,  he  summons 


124  MILTON 

up  all  his  reason  and  deliberation  to  assist  him;  he  searches, 
meditates,  is  industrious,  and  likely  consults  and  confers 
with  his  judicious  friends;  after  all  which  done  he  takes 
himself  to  be  informed  in  what  he  writes  as  well  as  any  that 
wrote  before  him.  If  in  this  the  most  consummate  act  of 
his  fidelity  and  ripeness,  no  years,  no  industry,  no  former 
proof  of  his  abilities  can  bring  him  to  that  state  of  maturity 
as  not  to  be  still  mistrusted  and  suspected,  unless  he  carry 
all  his  considerate  diligence,  all  his  midnight  watchings, 
and  expense  of  Palladian  oil,  to  the  hasty  view  of  an  un- 
leisured  licenser,  perhaps  much  his  younger,  perhaps  far 
his  inferior  in  judgment,  perhaps  one  who  never  knew  the 
labour  of  book-writing,  and  if  he  be  not  repulsed  or 
slighted,  must  appear  in  print  like  a  puny  with  his  guardian 
and  his  censor's  hand  on  the  back  of  his  title  to  be  his 
bail  and  surety  that  he  is  no  idiot  or  seducer,  it  can  not  be 
but  a  dishonour  and  derogation  to  the  author,  to  the  book, 
to  the  privilege  and  dignity  of  learning.  And  what  if  the 
author  shall  be  one  so  copious  of  fancy  as  to  have  many 
things  well  worth  the  adding  come  into  his  mind  after 
licensing,  while  the  book  is  yet  under  the  press,  which  not 
seldom  happens  to  the  best  and  diligentest  writers;  and  that 
perhaps  a  dozen  times  in  one  book?  The  printer  dares  not 
go  beyond  his  licensed  copy;  so  often,  then,  must  the  au- 
thor trudge  to  his  leave-giver,  that  those  his  new  insertions 
may  be  viewed,  and  many  a  jaunt  will  be  made  ere  that 
licenser,  for  it  must  be  the  same  man,  can  either  be  found, 
or  found  at  leisure;  meanwhile  either  the  press  must  stand 
still,  which  is  no  small  damage,  or  the  author  lose  his  accu- 
ratest  thoughts  and  send  the  book  forth  worse  than  he  had 
made  it,  which  to  a  diligent  writer  is  the  greatest  melan- 
choly and  vexation  that  can  befall.  And  how  can  a  man 
teach  with  authority,  which  is  the  life  of  teaching,  how 
can  he  be  a  doctor  in  his  book  as  he  ought  to  be,  or  else 
had  better  be  silent,  when  as  all  he  teaches,  all  he  delivers, 
is  but  under  the  tuition,  under  the  correction  of  his  patri- 
archal licenser  to  blot  or  alter  what  precisely  accords  not 
with  the  hidebound  humour  which  he  calls  his  judgment; 
when  every  acute  reader  upon  the  first  sight  of  a  pedantic 
license  will  be  ready  with  these  like  words  to  ding  the  book 
a  quoit's  distance  from  him:  "  I  hate  a  pupil  teacher,  I 


AREOPAGITICA  I25 

endure  not  an  instructor  that  comes  to  me  under  the  ward- 
ship of  an  overseeing  fist;  I  know  nothing  of  the  licenser, 
but  that  I  have  his  own  hand  here  for  his  arrogance;  who 
shall  warrant  me  his  judgment?  "  "  The  state,  sir,"  replies 
the  stationer;  but  has  a  quick  return:  "The  state  shalfbe 
my  governors,  but  not  my  critics;  they  may  be  mistaken  in 
the  choice  of  a  licenser  as  easily  as  this  licenser  may  be 
mistaken  in  an  author;  this  is  some  common  stuff  ";  and 
he  might  add  from  Sir  Francis  Bacon  that  such  authorized 
books  are  but  the  language  of  the  times.  For  though  a 
licenser  should  happen  to  be  judicious  more  than  ordinary, 
which  will  be  a  great  jeopardy  of  the  next  succession,  yet 
his  very  office  and  his  commission  enjoin  him  to  let  pass 
nothing  but  what  is  vulgarly  received  already.  Nay,  which 
is  more  lamentable,  if  the  work  of  any  deceased  author, 
though  never  so  famous  in  his  lifetime  and  even  to  this 
day,  come  to  their  hands  for  license  to  be  printed  or  re- 
printed, if  there  be  found  in  his  book  one  sentence  of  a 
venturous  edge,  uttered  in  the  height  of  zeal,  and  who 
knows  whether  it  might  not  be  the  dictate  of  a  divine  spirit, 
yet  not  suiting  with  every  low  decrepit  humour  of  their 
own,  though  it  were  Knox  himself,  the  reformer  of  a  king- 
dom, that  spake  it,  they  will  not  pardon  him  their  dash; 
the  sense  of  that  great  man  shall  to  all  posterity  be  lost  for 
the  fearfulness  or  the  presumptuous  rashness  of  a  perfunc- 
tory licenser.  And  to  what  an  author  this  violence  hath 
been  lately  done,  and  in  what  book  of  greatest  consequence 
to  be  faithfully  published,  I  could  now  instance,  but  shall 
forbear  till  a  more  convenient  season.  Yet  if  these  things 
be  not  resented  seriously  and  timely  by  them  who  have  the 
remedy  in  their  power,  but  that  such  iron  moulds  as  these 
shall  have  authority  to  gnaw  out  the  choicest  periods  of 
exquisitest  books,  and  to  commit  such  a  treacherous  fraud 
against  the  orphan  remainders  of  worthiest  men  after  death, 
the  more  sorrow  will  belong  to  that  hapless  race  of  men 
whose  misfortune  it  is  to  have  understanding.  Henceforth 
let  no  man  care  to  learn,  or  care  to  be  more  than  worldly 
wise;  for  certainly  in  higher  matters  to  be  ignorant  and 
slothful,  to  be  a  common  steadfast  dunce,  will  be  the  only 
pleasant  life  and  only  in  request. 

And  as  it  is  a  particular  disesteem  of  every  knowing 


126  MILTON 

person  alive,  and  most  injurious  to  the  written  labours  and 
monuments  of  the  dead,  so  to  me  it  seems  an  undervaluing 
and  vilifying  of  the  whole  nation.  I  can  not  set  so  light 
by  all  the  invention,  the  art,  the  wit,  the  grave  and  solid 
judgment  which  is  in  England,  as  that  it  can  be  compre- 
hended in  any  twenty  capacities  how  good  soever;  much 
less  that  it  should  not  pass  except  their  superintendence 
be  over  it,  except  it  be  sifted  and  strained  with  their 
strainers,  that  it  should  be  uncurrent  without  their  manual 
stamp.  Truth  and  understanding  are  not  such  wares  as 
to  be  monopolized  and  traded  in  by  tickets  and  statutes  and 
standards.  We  must  not  think  to  make  a  staple  commodity 
of  all  the  knowledge  in  the  land,  to  mark  and  license  it  like 
our  broadcloth  and  our  wool  packs.  What  is  it  but  a 
servitude  like  that  imposed  by  the  Philistines,  not  to  be 
allowed  the  sharpening  of  our  own  axes  and  coulters,  but 
we  must  repair  from  all  quarters  to  twenty  licensing  forges. 
Had  any  one  written  and  divulged  erroneous  things  and 
scandalous  to  honest  life,  misusing  and  forfeiting  the  es- 
teem had  of  his  reason  among  men,  if  after  conviction  this 
only  censure  were  adjudged  him,  that  he  should  never 
henceforth  write  but  what  were  first  examined  by  an  ap- 
pointed officer,  whose  hand  should  be  annexed  to  pass  his 
credit  for  him  that  now  he  might  be  safely  read,  it  could 
not  be  apprehended  less  than  a  disgraceful  punishment. 
Whence  to  include  the  whole  nation,  and  those  that  never 
yet  thus  offended,  under  such  a  diffident  and  suspectful 
prohibition,  may  plainly  be  understood  what  a  disparage- 
ment it  is;  so  much  the  more,  when  as  debtors  and  delin- 
quents may  walk  abroad  without  a  keeper,  but  inoffensive 
books  must  not  stir  forth  without  a  visible  jailer  in  their 
title.  Nor  is  it  to  the  common  people  less  than  a  reproach; 
for  if  we  be  so  jealous  over  them  as  that  we  dare  not  trust 
them  with  an  English  pamphlet,  what  do  we  but  censure 
them  for  a  giddy,  vicious,  and  ungrounded  people,  in  such 
a  sick  and  weak  estate  of  faith  and  discretion  as  to  be  able 
to  take  nothing  down  but  through  the  pipe  of  a  licenser? 
That  this  is  care  or  love  of  them  we  can  not  pretend,  when 
as  in  those  Popish  places  where  the  laity  are  most  hated 
and  despised,  the  same  strictness  is  used  over  them.  Wis- 
dom we  can  not  call  it,  because  it  stops  but  one  breach  of 


AREOPAGITICA  I2y 

license,  nor  that  neither,  when  as  those  corruptions  which 
it  seeks  to  prevent  break  in  faster  at  other  doors  which  can 
not  be  shut. 

And,  in  conclusion,  it  reflects  to  the  disrepute  of  our 
ministers  also,  of  whose  labours  we  should  hope  better,  and 
of  the  proficiency  which  their  flock  reaps  by  them,  than  that 
after  all  this  light  of  the  gospel  which  is,  and  is  to  be,  and 
all  this  continual  preaching,  they  should  be  still  frequented 
with  such  an  unprincipled,  unedified,  and  laic  rabble,  as  that 
the  whiff  of  every  new  pamphlet  should  stagger  them  out 
of  their  catechism  and  Christian  walking.  This  may  have 
much  reason  to  discourage  the  ministers  when  such  a  low 
conceit  is  had  of  all  their  exhortations  and  the  benefiting 
of  their  hearers,  as  that  they  are  not  thought  fit  to  be 
turned  loose  to  three  sheets  of  paper  without  a  licenser; 
that  all  the  sermons,  all  the  lectures  preached,  printed, 
vented  in  such  numbers  and  such  volumes  as  have  now 
well-nigh  made  all  other  books  unsalable,  should  not  be 
armour  enough  against  one  single  enchiridion,  without  the 
Castle  St.  Angelo  of  an  imprimatur. 

And  lest  some  should  persuade  ye,  Lords  and  Com- 
mons, that  these  arguments  of  learned  men's  discourage- 
ment at  this  your  order  are  mere  flourishes  and  not  real, 
I  could  recount  what  I  have  seen  and  heard  in  other  coun- 
tries, where  this  kind  of  inquisition  tyrannizes;  when  I  have 
sat  among  their  learned  men,  for  that  honour  I  had,  and 
been  counted  happy  to  be  born  in  such  a  place  of  philo- 
sophic freedom  as  they  supposed  England  was,  while  them- 
selves did  nothing  but  bemoan  the  servile  condition  into 
which  learning  among  them  was  brought;  that  this  was 
it  which  had  damped  the  glory  of  Italian  wits,  that  nothing 
had  been  there  written  now  these  many  years  but  flattery  and 
fustian.  There  it  was  that  I  found  and  visited  the  famous 
Galileo,  grown  old,  a  prisoner  to  the  Inquisition  for  think- 
ing in  astronomy  otherwise  than  the  Franciscan  and 
Dominican  licensers  thought.  And  though  I  knew  that 
England  then  was  groaning  loudest  under  the  prelatical 
yoke,  nevertheless  I  took  it  as  a  pledge  of  future  happi- 
ness that  other  nations  were  so  persuaded  of  her  liberty. 
Yet  was  it  beyond  my  hope  that  those  worthies  were  then 
breathing  in  her  air  who  should  be  her  leaders  to  such  a 


128  MILTON 

deliverance  as  shall  never  be  forgotten  by  any  revolution 
of  time  that  this  world  hath  to  finish.  When  that  was  once 
begun  it  was  as  little  in  my  feaf  that  what  words  of  complaint 
I  heard  among  learned  men  of  other  parts  uttered  against 
the  Inquisition,  the  same  I  should  hear  by  as  learned  men 
at  home  uttered  in  time  of  Parliament  against  an  order  of 
licensing;  and  that  so  generally,  that  when  I  disclosed 
myself  a  companion  of  their  discontent,  I  might  say,  if 
without  envy,  that  he  whom  an  honest  quaestorship  had 
endeared  to  the  Sicilians  was  not  more  by  them  importuned 
against  Verres  than  the  favourable  opinion  which  I  had 
among  many  who  honour  ye  and  are  known  and  respected 
by  ye,  loaded  me  with  entreaties  and  persuasions,  that  I 
would  not  despair  to  lay  together  that  which  just  reason 
should  bring  into  my  mind  toward  the  removal  of  an  un- 
deserved thraldom  upon  learning.  That  this  is  not,  there- 
fore, the  disburdening  of  a  particular  fancy,  but  the  com- 
mon grievance  of  all  those  who  had  prepared  their  minds 
and  studies  above  the  vulgar  pitch,  to  advance  truth  in 
others  and  from  others  to  entertain  it,  thus  much  may 
satisfy.  And  in  their  name  I  shall  for  neither  friend  nor 
foe  conceal  what  the  general  murmur  is;  that  if  it  come 
to  inquisitioning  again  and  licensing,  and  that  we  are  so 
timorous  of  ourselves,  and  so  suspicious  of  all  men,  as  to 
fear  each  book,  and  the  shaking  of  every  leaf,  before  we 
know  what  the  contents  are,  if  some  who  but  of  late  were 
little  better  than  silenced  from  preaching,  shall  come  now 
to  silence  us  from  reading  except  what  they  please,  it  can 
not  be  guessed  what  is  intended  by  some  but  a  second 
tyranny  over  learning;  and  will  soon  put  it  out  of  contro- 
versy that  bishops  and  presbyters  are  the  same  to  us,  both 
name  and  thing.  That  those  evils  of  prelacy,  which  be- 
fore from  five  or  six  and  twenty  sees  were  distributively 
charged  upon  the  whole  people,  will  now  light  wholly  upon 
learning,  is  not  obscure  to  us,  when  as  now  the  pastor  of  a 
small  unlearned  parish  on  the  sudden  shall  be  exalted 
archbishop  over  a  large  diocese  of  books,  and  yet  not 
remove,  but  keep  his  other  cure  too,  a  mystical  pluralist. 
He  who  but  of  late  cried  down  the  sole  ordination  of  every 
novice  bachelor  of  art,  and  denied  sole  jurisdiction  over 
the  simplest  parishioner,  shall  now,  at  home  in  his  private 


AREOPAGITICA 

chair,  assume  both  these  overworthiest  and  excellentest 
books  and  ablest  authors  that  write  them.  This  is  not  the 
covenants  and  protestations  that  we  have  made,  this  is 
not  to  put  down  Prelacy:  this  is  but  to  chop  an  Episcopacy; 
this  is  but  to  translate  the  palace  metropolitan  from  one 
kind  of  dominion  into  another;  this  is  but  an  old  canonical 
sleight  of  commuting  our  penance.  To  startle  thus  betimes 
at  a  mere  unlicensed  pamphlet  will  after  a  while  be  afraid 
of  every  conventicle,  and  a  while  after  will  make  a  con- 
venticle of  every  Christian  meeting.  But  I  am  certain  that 
a  state  governed  by  the  rules  of  justice  and  fortitude,  or  a 
church  built  and  founded  upon  the  rock  of  faith  and  true 
knowledge,  can  not  be  so  pusillanimous.  While  things  are 
yet  not  constituted  in  religion,  that  freedom  of  writing 
should  be  restrained  by  a  discipline  imitated  from  the  prel- 
ates and  learned  by  them  from  the  Inquisition,  to  shut  us 
up  all  again  into  the  breast  of  a  licenser,  must  needs  give 
cause  of  doubt  and  discouragement  to  all  learned  and  re- 
ligious men,  who  can  not  but  discern  the  fineness  of  this 
politic  drift,  and  who  are  the  contrivers:  that  while  bishops 
were  to  be  baited  down,  then  all  presses  might  be  open;  it 
was  the  people's  birthright  and  privilege  in  time  of  Parlia- 
ment, it  was  the  breaking  forth  of  light.  But  now  the 
bishops  abrogated  and  voided  out  of  the  Church,  as  if 
our  reformation  sought  no  more  but  to  make  room  for 
others  into  their  seats  under  another  name,  the  Episcopal 
arts  begin  to  bud  again,  the  cruise  of  truth  must  run  no 
more  oil,  liberty  of  printing  must  be  enthralled  again  under 
a  prelatical  commission  of  twenty,  the  privilege  of  the 
people  nullified,  and,  which  is  worse,  the  freedom  of  learn- 
ing must  groan  again  and  to  her  old  fetters,  all  this  the 
Parliament  yet  sitting.  Although  their  own  late  argu- 
ments and  defences  against  the  prelates  might  remember 
them  that  this  obstructing  violence  meets  for  the  most  part 
with  an  event  utterly  opposite  to  the  end  which  it  drives 
at;  instead  of  suppressing  sects  and  schisms,  it  raises  them 
and  invests  them  with  a  reputation.  "  The  punishing  of 
wits  enhances  their  authority,"  saith  the  Viscount  St. 
Albans,  "  and  a  forbidden  writing  is  thought  to  be  a  certain 
spark  of  truth  that  flies  up  in  the  faces  of  them  who  seek 
to  tread  it  out."  This  order,  therefore,  may  prove  a  nurs- 


1 30  MILTON 

ing  mother  to  sects,  but  I  shall  easily  show  how  it  will  be 
a  stepdame  to  truth:  and  first  by  disenabling  us  to  the 
maintenance  of  what  is  known  already. 

Well  knows  he  who  uses  to  consider,  that  our  faith  and 
knowledge  thrives  by  exercise  as  well  as  our  limbs  and 
complexion.  Truth  is  compared  in  Scripture  to  a  stream- 
ing fountain:  if  her  waters  flow  not  in  a  perpetual  pro- 
gression, they  sicken  into  a  muddy  pool  of  conformity  and 
tradition.  A  man  may  be  a  heretic  in  the  truth,  and  if  he 
believe  things  only  because  his  pastor  says  so,  or  the  assem- 
bly so  determines,  without  knowing  other  reason,  though 
his  belief  be  true,  yet  the  very  truth  he  holds  becomes  his 
heresy.  There  is  not  any  burden  that  some  would  gladlier 
post  off  to  another  than  the  charge  and  care  of  their  re- 
ligion. There  be — who  knows  not  that  there  be? — of  Prot- 
estants and  professors  who  live  and  die  in  as  arrant  an  im- 
plicit faith  as  any  lay  Papist  of  Loretto.  A  wealthy  man, 
addicted  to  his  pleasure  and  to  his  profits,  finds  religion  to 
be  a  traffic  so  entangled,  and  of  so  many  peddling  accounts, 
that  of  all  mysteries  he  can  not  skill  to  keep  a  stock  going 
upon  that  trade.  What  should  he  do?  Fain  he  would  have 
the  name  to  be  religious,  fain  he  would  bear  up  with  his 
neighbours  in  that.  What  does  he,  therefore,  but  resolve 
to  give  over  toiling,  and  to  find  himself  out  some  factor 
to  whose  care  and  credit  he  may  commit  the  whole  man- 
aging of  his  religious  affairs,  some  divine  of  note  and  esti- 
mation that  must  be.  To  him  he  adheres,  resigns  the  whole 
warehouse  of  his  religion,  with  all  the  locks  and  keys,  into 
his  custody;  and,  indeed,  makes  the  very  person  of  that 
man  his  religion,  esteems  his  associating  with  him  a  suf- 
ficient evidence  and  commendatory  of  his  own  piety.  So 
that  a  man  may  say  his  religion  is  now  no  more  within 
himself,  but  is  become  a  dividual  movable,  and  goes  and 
comes  near  him  according  as  that  good  man  frequents  the 
house.  He  entertains  him,  gives  him  gifts,  feasts  him, 
lodges  him;  his  religion  comes  home  at  night,  prays,  is 
liberally  supped,  and  sumptuously  laid  to  sleep;  rises,  is 
saluted,  and  after  the  malmsey,  or  some  well-spiced  brew- 
age,  and  better  breakfasted  than  he  whose  morning  appe- 
tite would  have  gladly  fed  on  green  figs  between  Bethany 
and  Jerusalem;  his  religion  walks  abroad  at  eight,  and 


AREOPAGITICA  ,„ 

leaves  his  kind  entertainer  in  the  shop  trading  all  day  with- 
out his  religion. 

Another  sort  there  be  who  when  they  hear  that  all 
things  shall  be  ordered,  all  things  regulated  and  settled, 
nothing  written  but  what  passes  through  the  custom-house 
of  certain  publicans  that  have  the  tunaging  and  the  pound- 
aging  of  all  free-spoken  truth,  will  straight  give  themselves 
up  into  your  hands;  make  them  and  cut  them  out  what 
religion  ye  please.  There  be  delights,  there  be  recreations 
and  jolly  pastimes  that  will  fetch  the  day  about  from  sun 
to  sun,  and  rock  the  tedious  year  as  in  a  delightful  dream. 
What  need  they  torture  their  heads  with  that  which  others 
have  taken  so  strictly  and  so  unalterably  into  their  own 
purveying?  These  are  the  fruits  which  a  dull  ease  and  ces- 
sation of  our  knowledge  will  bring  forth  among  the  people. 
How  goodly  and  how  to  be  wished  were  such  an  obedient 
unanimity  as  this,  what  a  fine  conformity  would  it  starch 
us  all  into!  Doubtless  a  staunch  and  solid  piece  of  frame- 
work as  any  January  could  freeze  together. 

Nor  much  better  will  be  the  consequence  even  among 
the  clergy  themselves.  It  is  no  new  thing  never  heard 
of  before  for  a  parochial  minister,  who  has  his  reward  and 
is  at  his  Hercules'  Pillars  in  a  warm  benefice,  to  be  easily 
inclinable,  if  he  have  nothing  else  that  may  rouse  up  his 
studies,  to  finish  his  circuit  in  an  English  concordance 
and  a  topic  folio,  the  gatherings  and  savings  of  a  sober 
graduateship,  a  harmony  and  a  catena,  treading  the  con- 
stant round  of  certain  common  doctrinal  heads,  attended 
with  their  uses,  motives,  marks  and  means,  out  of  which 
as  out  of  an  alphabet  or  sol  fa,  by  forming  and  transforming, 
joining  and  disjoining  variously  a  little  book-craft,  and  two 
hours'  meditation  might  furnish  him  unspeakably  to  the  per- 
formance of  more  than  a  weekly  charge  of  sermoning,  not  to 
reckon  up  the  infinite  helps  of  interlinearies,  breviaries, 
synopses,  and  other  loitering  gear.  But  as  for  the  multi- 
tude of  sermons  ready  printed  and  piled  up,  on  every  text 
that  is  not  difficult,  our  London  trading  St.  Thomas  in 
his  vestry,  and  add  to  boot  St.  Martin  and  St.  Hugh,  have 
not  within  their  hallowed  limits  more  vendible  ware  of  all 
sorts  ready  made;  so  that  penury  he  never  need  fear  of 
pulpit  provision,  having  where  so  plenteously  to  refresh 


132 


MILTON 


his  magazine.  But  if  his  rear  and  flanks  be  not  impaled, 
if  his  back  door  be  not  secured  by  the  rigid  licenser,  but 
that  a  bold  book  may  now  and  then  issue  forth,  and  give 
the  assault  to  some  of  his  old  collections  in  their  trenches, 
it  will  concern  him  then  to  keep  waking,  to  stand  in  watch, 
to  set  good  guards  and  sentinels  about  his  received  opin- 
ions, to  walk  the  round  and  counter-round  with  his  fellow- 
inspectors,  fearing  lest  any  of  his  flock  be  seduced,  who 
also  then  would  be  better  instructed,  better  exercised  and 
disciplined.  And  God  send  that  the  fear  of  this  diligence 
which  must  then  be  used,  do  not  make  us  affect  the  lazi- 
ness of  a  licensing  church! 

For  if  we  be  sure  we  are  in  the  right,  and  do  not  hold 
the  truth  guiltily,  which  becomes  not,  if  we  ourselves  con- 
demn not  our  own  weak  and  frivolous  teaching,  and  the 
people  for  an  untaught  and  irreligious  gadding  rout,  what 
can  be  more  fair  than  when  a  man — judicious,  learned,  and 
of  a  conscience,  for  aught  we  know,  as  good  as  theirs  that 
taught  us  what  we  know — shall  not  privily  from  house  to 
house,  which  is  more  dangerous,  but  openly  by  writing, 
publish  to  the  world  what  his  opinion  is,  what  his  reasons, 
and  wherefore  that  which  is  now  thought  can  not  be  sound? 
Christ  urged  it  as  wherewith  to  justify  himself,  that  he 
preached  in  public;  yet  writing  is  more  public  than  preach- 
ing, and  more  easy  to  refutation,  if  need  be,  there  being 
so  many  whose  business  and  profession  merely  it  is  to  be 
the  champions  of  truth,  which,  if  they  neglect,  what  can 
be  imputed  but  their  sloth  or  inability? 

Thus  much  we  are  hindered  and  disinured  by  this 
course  of  licensing  toward  the  true  knowledge  of  what  we 
seem  to  know.  For  how  much  it  hurts  and  hinders  the 
licensers  themselves  in  the  calling  of  their  ministry,  more 
than  any  secular  employment,  if  they  will  discharge  that . 
office  as  they  ought,  so  that  of  necessity  they  must  neglect 
either  the  one  duty  or  the  other,  I  insist  not,  because  it  is 
a  particular,  but  leave  it  to  their  own  conscience,  how  they 
will  decide  it  there. 

There  is  yet  behind  of  what  I  purposed  to  lay  open, 
the  incredible  loss  and  detriment  that  this  plot  of  licensing 
puts  us  to.  More  than  if  some  enemy  at  sea  should  stop  up 
all  our  havens  and  ports  and  creeks,  it  hinders  and  retards 


AREOPAGITICA  I33 

the  importation  of  our  richest  merchandise,  truth;  nay,  it 
was  first  established  and  put  in  practice  by  antichristian 
malice  and  mystery  on  set  purpose  to  extinguish,  if  it  were 
possible,  the  light  of  reformation,  and  to  settle  falsehood, 
little  differing  from  that  policy  wherewith  the  Turk  upholds 
his  Alcoran  by  the  prohibition  of  printing.  It  is  not  de- 
nied, but  gladly  confessed,  we  are  to  send  our  thanks  and 
vows  to  Heaven  louder  than  most  of  nations  for  that  great 
measure  of  truth  which  we  enjoy,  especially  in  those  main 
points  between  us  and  the  Pope  with  his  appurtenances  the 
prelates;  but  he  who  thinks  we  are  to  pitch  our  tent  here, 
and  have  attained  the  utmost  prospect  of  reformation  that 
the  mortal  glass  wherein  we  contemplate  can  show  us,  till 
we  come  to  beatific  vision,  that  man  by  this  very  opinion 
declares  that  he  is  yet  far  short  of  truth. 

Truth,  indeed,  came  once  into  the  world  with  her 
Divine  Master,  and  was  a  perfect  shape  most  glorious  to 
look  on;  but  when  he  ascended,  and  his  apostles  after 
him  were  laid  asleep,  then  straight  arose  a  wicked  race  of 
deceivers,  who,  as  that  story  goes  of  the  Egyptian  Typhon 
with  his  conspirators  how  they  dealt  with  the  good  Osiris, 
took  the  virgin  truth,  hewed  her  lovely  form  into  a  thou- 
sand pieces,  and  scattered  them  to  the  four  winds.  From 
that  time  ever  since,  the  sad  friends  of  truth,  such  as  dost 
appear,  imitating  the  careful  search  that  Isis  made  for  the 
mangled  body  of  Osiris,  went  up  and  down  gathering  up 
limb  by  limb  still  as  they  could  find  them.  We  have  not 
yet  found  them  all,  Lords  and  Commons,  nor  ever  shall 
do,  till  her  Master's  second  coming;  he  shall  bring  to- 
gether every  joint  and  member,  and  shall  mould  them  into 
an  immortal  feature  of  loveliness  and  perfection.  Suffer 
not  these  licensing  prohibitions  to  stand  at  every  place  of 
opportunity  forbidding  and  disturbing  them  that  continue 
seeking,  that  continue  to  do  our  obsequies  to  the  torn  body 
of  our  martyred  saint.  We  boast  our  light,  but  if  we  look 
not  wisely  on  the  sun  itself  it  smites  us  into  darkness. 
Who  can  discern  those  planets  that  are  oft  combust,  and 
those  stars  of  brightest  magnitude  that  rise  and  set  with 
the  sun,  until  the  opposite  motion  of  their  orbs  bring  them 
to  such  a  place  in  the  firmament,  where  they  may  be  seen 
evening  or  morning?  The  light  which  we  have  gained 
9 


MILTON 

was  given  us,  not  to  be  ever  staring  on,  but  by  it  to  dis- 
cover onward  things  more  remote  from  our  knowledge. 
It  is  not  the  unfrocking  of  a  priest,  the  unmitring  of  a 
bishop,  and  the  removing  him  from  off  the  Presbyterian 
shoulders  that  will  make  us  a  happy  nation;  no,  if  other 
things  as  great  in  the  Church  and  in  the  rule  of  life  both 
economical  a.nd  political  be  not  looked  into  and  reformed, 
we  have  looked  so  long  upon  the  blaze  that  Zuinglius  and 
Calvin  hath  beaconed  up  to  us,  that  we  are  stark  blind. 
There  be  who  perpetually  complain  of  schisms  and  sects, 
and  make  it  such  a  calamity  that  any  man  dissents  from 
their  maxims.  It  is  their  own  pride  and  ignorance  which 
causes  the  disturbing,  who  neither  will  hear  with  meek- 
ness nor  can  convince;  yet  all  must  be  suppressed  which 
is  not  found  in  their  syntagma.  They  are  the  troublers, 
they  are  the  dividers  of  unity,  who  neglect  and  permit  not 
others  to  unite  those  dissevered  pieces  which  are  yet  want- 
ing to  the  body  of  truth.  To  be  still  searching  what  we 
know  not  by  what  we  know,  still  closing  up  truth  to  truth 
as  we  find  it  (for  all  her  body  is  homogeneal  and  propor- 
tional), this  is  the  golden  rule  in  theology  as  well  as  in 
arithmetic,  and  makes  up  the  best  harmony  in  a  church, 
not  the  forced  and  outward  union  of  cold  and  neutral  and 
inwardly  divided  minds. 

Lords  and  Commons  of  England,  consider  what  nation 
it  is  whereof  ye  are  and  whereof  ye  are  the  governors:  a 
nation  not  slow  and  dull,  but  of  a  quick,  ingenious,  and 
piercing  spirit,  acute  to  invent,  subtle  and  sinewy  to  dis- 
course, not  beneath  the  reach  of  any  point  the  highest  that 
human  capacity  can  soar  to.  Therefore  the  studies  of 
learning  in  her  deepest  sciences  have  been  so  ancient  and 
so  eminent  among  us,  that  writers  of  good  antiquity  and 
ablest  judgment  have  been  persuaded  that  even  the  school 
of  Pythagoras  and  the  Persian  wisdom  took  beginning 
from  the  old  philosophy  of  this  island.  And  that  wise  and 
civil  Roman,  Julius  Agricola,  who  governed  once  here  for 
Caesar,  preferred  the  natural  wits  of  Britain  before  the 
laboured  studies  of  the  French.  Nor  is  it  for  nothing  that 
the  grave  and  frugal  Transylvanian  sends  out  yearly  from 
as  far  as  the  mountainous  borders  of  Russia  and  beyond 
the  Hercynian  wilderness,  not  their  youth,  but  their  staid 


AREOPAGITICA  l$$ 

men,  to  learn  our  language  and  our  theologic  arts.  Yet 
that  which  is  above  all  this,  the  favour  and  the  love  of 
Heaven,  we  have  great  argument  to  think  in  a  peculiar 
manner  propitious  and  propending  toward  us.  Why  else 
was  this  nation  chosen  before  any  other,  that  out  of  her 
as  out  of  Sion  should  be  proclaimed  and  sounded  forth 
the  first  tidings  and  trumpet  of  Reformation  to  all  Europe? 
And  had  it  not  been  the  obstinate  perverseness  of  our  prel- 
ates against  the  divine  and  admirable  spirit  of  Wickliff, 
to  suppress  him  as  a  schismatic  and  innovator,  perhaps 
neither  the  Bohemian  Huss  and  Jerome,  no,  nor  the  name 
of  Luther  or  of  Calvin,  had  been  ever  known;  the  glory 
of  reforming  all  our  neighbours  had  been  completely  ours. 
But  now,  as  our  obdurate  clergy  have  with  violence  de- 
meaned the  matter,  we  are  become  hitherto  the  latest  and 
the  backwardest  scholars,  of  whom  God  offered  to  have 
made  us  the  teachers.  Now  once  again,  by  all  concurrence 
of  signs  and  by  the  general  instinct  of  holy  and  devout 
men,  as  they  daily  and  solemnly  express  their  thoughts, 
God  is  decreeing  to  begin  some  new  and  great  period  in 
his  Church,  even  to  the  reforming  of  reformation  itself. 
What  does  he  then  but  reveal  himself  to  his  servants,  and 
as  his  manner  is,  first  to  his  Englishmen;  I  say,  as  his 
manner  is,  first  to  us,  though  we  mark  not  the  method  of 
his  counsels  and  are  unworthy?  Behold  now  this  vast  city: 
a  city  of  refuge,  the  mansion  house  of  liberty,  encompassed 
and  surrounded  with  his  protection;  the  shop  of  war  hath 
not  there  more  anvils  and  hammers  waking,  to  fashion 
out  the  plates  and  instruments  of  armed  justice  in  defence 
of  beleaguered  truth,  than  there  be  pens  and  heads  there, 
sitting  by  their  studious  lamps,  musing,  searching,  revolv- 
ing new  notions  and  ideas  wherewith  to  present  as  with 
their  homage  and  their  fealty  the  approaching  Reformation, 
others  as  fast  reading,  trying  all  things,  assenting  to  the 
force  of  reason  and  convincement.  What  could  a  man  re- 
quire more  from  a  nation  so  pliant  and  so  prone  to  seek 
after  knowledge?  What  wants  there  to  such  a  towardly 
and  pregnant  soil  but  wise  and  faithful  labourers,  to  make 
a  knowing  people,  a  nation  of  prophets,  of  sages,  and  of 
worthies?  We  reckon  more  than  five  months  yet  to  har- 
vest; there  need  not  be  five  weeks;  had  we  but  eyes  to 


136  MILTON 

lift  up,  the  fields  are  white  already.  Where  there  is  much 
desire  to  learn,  there  of  necessity  will  be  much  arguing, 
much  writing,  many  opinions;  for  opinion  in  good  men  is 
but  knowledge  in  the  making.  Under  these  fantastic  ter- 
rors of  sect  and  schism  we  wrong  the  earnest  and  zealous 
thirst  after  knowledge  and  understanding  which  God  hath 
stirred  up  in  this  city.  What  some  lament  of  we  rather 
should  rejoice  at,  should  rather  praise  this  pious  forward- 
ness among  men  to  reassume  the  ill-deputed  care  of  their 
religion  into  their  own  hands  again.  A  little  generous  pru- 
dence, a  little  forbearance  of  one  another  and  some  grain 
of  charity,  might  win  all  these  diligences  to  join  and  unite 
in  one  general  and  brotherly  search  after  truth,  could  we 
but  forego  this  prelatical  tradition  of  crowding  free  con- 
sciences and  Christian  liberties  into  canons  and  precepts 
of  men.  I  doubt  not,  if  some  great  and  worthy  stranger 
should  come  among  us,  wise  to  discern  the  mould  and 
temper  of  a  people  and  how  to  govern  it,  observing  the 
high  hopes  and  aims,  the  diligent  alacrity  of  our  extended 
thoughts  and  reasonings  in  the  pursuance  of  truth  and  free- 
dom, but  that  he  would  cry  out  as  Pyrrhus  did,  admiring 
the  Roman  docility  and  courage:  "  If  such  were  my  Epi- 
rots,  I  would  not  despair  the  greatest  design  that  could 
be  attempted  to  make  a  church  or  kingdom  happy."  Yet 
these  are  the  men  cried  out  against  for  schismatics  and 
sectaries;  as  if,  while  the  Temple  of  the  Lord  was  building, 
some  cutting,  some  squaring  the  marble,  others  hewing 
the  cedars,  there  should  be  a  sort  of  irrational  men  who 
could  not  consider  there  must  be  many  schisms  and  many 
dissections  made  in  the  quarry  and  in  the  timber,  ere  the 
house  of  God  can  be  built.  And  when  every  stone  is  laid 
artfully  together  it  can  not  be  united  into  a  continuity,  it 
can  but  be  contiguous  in  this  world;  neither  can  every 
piece  of  the  building  be  of  one  form;  nay,  rather  the  per- 
fection consists  in  this,  that  out  of  many  moderate  varieties 
and  brotherly  dissimilitudes  that  are  not  vastly  dispropor- 
tional  arises  the  goodly  and  the  graceful  symmetry  that 
commends  the  whole  pile  and  structure.  Let  us  therefore 
be  more  considerate  builders,  more  wise  in  spiritual  archi- 
tecture, when  great  reformation  is  expected.  For  now 
the  time  seems  come  wherein  Moses  the  great  prophet 


AREOPAGITICA  I37 

may  sit  in  heaven  rejoicing  to  see  that  memorable  and 
glorious  wish  of  his  fulfilled,  when  not  only  our  seventy 
elders  but  all  the  Lord's  people  are  become  prophets.  No 
marvel  then,  though  some  men,  and  some  good  men  too, 
perhaps,  but  young  in  goodness,  as  Joshua  then  was,  envy 
them.  They  fret,  and  out  of  their  own  weakness  are  in 
agony,  lest  those  divisions  and  subdivisions  will  undo  us. 
The  adversary  again  applauds,  and  waits  the  hour;  when 
they  have  branched  themselves  out,  saith  he,  small  enough 
into  parties  and  partitions,  then  will  be  our  time.  Fool! 
he  sees  not  the  firm  root,  out  of  which  we  all  grow  though 
into  branches;  nor  will  beware  until  he  see  our  small 
divided  maniples  cutting  through  at  every  angle  of  his  ill- 
united  and  unwieldy  brigade.  And  that  we  are  to  hope 
better  of  all  these  supposed  sects  and  schisms,  and  that  we 
shall  not  need  tliat  solicitude,  honest,  perhaps,  though  over- 
timorous  of  them  that  vex  in  this  behalf,  but  shall  laugh 
in  the  end  at  those  malicious  applauders  of  our  differences, 
I  have  these  reasons  to  persuade  me: 

First,  when  a  city  shall  be,  as  it  were,  besieged  and 
blocked  about,  her  navigable  river  infested,  inroads  and 
incursions  round,  defiance  and  battle  oft  rumoured  to  be 
marching  up  even  to  her  walls  and  suburb  trenches,  that 
then  the  people,  or  the  greater  part,  more  than  at  other 
times,  wholly  taken  up  with  the  study  of  highest  and  most 
important  matters  to  be  reformed,  should  be  disputing, 
reasoning,  reading,  inventing,  discoursing,  even  to  a  rarity 
and  admiration,  things  not  before  discoursed  or  written  of, 
argues  first  a  singular  good-will,  contentedness  and  con- 
fidence in  your  prudent  foresight  and  safe  government, 
Lords  and  Commons;  and  from  thence  derives  itself  to 
a  gallant  bravery  and  well-grounded  contempt  of  their 
enemies,  as  if  there  were  no  small  number  of  as  great 
spirits  among  us  as  his  was,  who  when  Rome  was  nigh 
besieged  by  Hannibal,  being  in  the  city,  bought  that  piece 
of  ground  at  no  cheap  rate  whereon  Hannibal  himself  en- 
camped his  own  regiment.  Next,  it  is  a  lively  and  cheerful 
presage  of  our  happy  success  and  victory.  For  as  in  a 
body,  when  the  blood  is  fresh,  the  spirits  pure  and  vigor- 
ous, not  only  to  vital  but  to  rational  faculties,  and  those  in 
the  acutest  and  the  pertest  operations  of  wit  and  subtlety, 


I38  MILTON 

it  argues  in  what  good  plight  and  constitution  the  body 
is,  so  when  the  cheerfulness  of  the  people  is  so  sprightly 
up,  as  that  it  has  not  only  wherewith  to  guard  well  its 
own  freedom  and  safety  but  to  spare,  and  to  bestow  upon 
the  solidest  and  sublimest  points  of  controversy  and  new 
invention,  it  betokens  us  not  degenerated,  nor  drooping  to 
a  fatal  decay,  but  casting  off  the  old  and  wrinkled  skin  of 
corruption  to  outlive  these  pangs  and  wax  young  again, 
entering  the  glorious  ways  of  truth  and  prosperous  virtue, 
destined  to  become  great  and  honourable  in  these  latter 
ages.  Methinks  I  see  in  my  mind  a  noble  and  puissant 
nation  rousing  herself  like  a  strong  man  after  sleep,  and 
shaking  her  invincible  locks.  Methinks  I  see  her  as  an 
eagle  mewing  her  mighty  youth,  and  kindling  her  undaz- 
zled  eyes  at  the  full  midday  beam,  purging  and  unsealing 
her  long-abused  sight  at  the  fountain  itself  of  heavenly 
radiance,  while  the  whole  noise  of  timorous  and  flocking 
birds,  with  those  also  that  love  the  twilight,  flutter  about, 
amazed  at  what  she  means,  and  in  their  envious  gabble 
would  prognosticate  a  year  of  sects  and  schisms. 

What  should  ye  do  then,  should  ye  suppress  all  this 
flowery  crop  of  knowledge  and  new  light  sprung  up  and 
yet  springing  daily  in  this  city,  should  ye  set  an  oligarchy 
of  twenty  ingrossers  over  it,  to  bring  a  famine  upon  our 
minds  again,  when  we  shall  know  nothing  but  what  is 
measured  to  us  by  their  bushel?  Believe  it,  Lords  and 
Commons,  they  who  counsel  ye  to  such  a  suppressing  do 
as  good  as  bid  ye  suppress  yourselves;  and  I  will  soon  show 
how.  If  it  be  desired  to  know  the  immediate  cause  of  all 
this  free  writing  and  free  speaking,  there  can  not  be 
assigned  a  truer  than  your  own  mild  and  free  and  human 
government;  it  is  the  liberty,  Lords  and  Commons,  which 
your  own  valorous  and  happy  counsels  have  purchased 
us,  liberty  which  is  the  nurse  of  all  great  wits;  this  is  that 
which  hath  rarefied  and  enlightened  our  spirits  like  the 
influence  of  Heaven;  this  is  that  which  hath  enfranchised, 
enlarged  and  lifted  up  our  apprehensions  degrees  above 
themselves.  Ye  can  not  make  us  now  less  capable,  less 
knowing,  less  eagerly  pursuing  of  the  truth,  unless  ye  first 
make  yourselves,  that  made  us  so,  less  the  lovers,  less  the 
founders  of  our  true  liberty.  We  can  grow  ignorant  again, 


AREOPAGITICA  !39 

brutish,  formal,  and  slavish,  as  ye  found  us;  but  you  then 
must  first  become  that  which  ye  can  not  be,  oppressive, 
arbitrary,  and  tyrannous,  as  they  were  from  whom  ye  have 
freed  us.  That  our  hearts  are  now  more  capacious,  our 
thoughts  more  erected  to  the  search  and  expectation  of 
greatest  and  exactest  things,  is  the  issue  of  your  own  virtue 
propagated  in  us;  ye  can  not  suppress  that  unless  ye  re-en- 
force an  abrogated  and  merciless  law,  that  fathers  may  des- 
patch at  will  their  own  children.  And  who  shall  then  stick 
closest  to  ye,  and  excite  others?  Not  he  who  takes  up  arms 
for  cote  and  conduct  and  his  four  nobles  of  Danegelt.  Al- 
though I  dispraise  not  the  defence  of  just  immunities,  yet 
love  my  peace  better,  if  that  were  all.  Give  me  the  liberty 
to  know,  to  utter,  and  to  argue  freely  according  to  con- 
science, above  all  liberties. 

What  would  be  best  advised  then,  if  it  be  found  so 
hurtful  and  so  unequal  to  suppress  opinions  for  the  new- 
ness or  the  unsuitableness  to  a  customary  acceptance,  will 
not  be  my  task  to  say;  I  only  shall  repeat  what  I  have 
learned  from  one  of  your  own  honourable  number,  a  right 
noble  and  pious  lord,  who,  had  he  not  sacrificed  his  life 
and  fortunes  to  the  Church  and  commonwealth,  we  had 
not  now  missed  and  bewailed  a  worthy  and  undoubted 
patron  of  this  argument.  Ye  know  him,  I  am  sure;  yet  I, 
for  honour's  sake,  and  may  it  be  eternal  to  him,  shall  name 
him  the  Lord  Brook.  He,  writing  of  Episcopacy,  and  by 
the  way  treating  of  sects  and  schisms,  left  ye  his  vote, 
or  rather  now  the  last  words  of  his  dying  charge,  which  I 
know  will  ever  be  of  dear  and  honoured  regard  with  ye, 
so  full  of  meekness  and  breathing  charity,  that  next  to  his 
last  testament,  who  bequeathed  love  and  peace  to  his  dis- 
ciples, I  can  not  call  to  mind  where  I  have  read  or  heard 
words  more  mild  and  peaceful.  He  there  exhorts  us  to 
hear  with  patience  and  humility  those,  however  they  be 
miscalled,  that  desire  to  live  purely,  in  such  a  use  of  God's 
ordinances  as  the  best  guidance  of  their  conscience  gives 
them,  and  to  tolerate  them,  though  in  some  disconformity 
to  ourselves.  The  book  itself  will  tell  us  more  at  large,  be- 
ing published  to  the  world  and  dedicated  to  the  Parliament 
by  him  who  both  for  his  life  and  for  his  death  deserves  that 
what  advice  he  left  be  not  laid  by  without  perusal. 


I40  MILTON 

And  now  the  time  in  special  is  by  privilege  to  write  and 
speak  what  may  help  to  the  further  discussing  of  matters 
in  agitation.  The  Temple  of  Janus  with  his  two  contro- 
versal  faces  might  now  not  insignificantly  be  set  open. 
And  though  all  the  winds  of  doctrine  were  let  loose  to  play 
upon  the  earth,  so  truth  be  in  the  field,  we  do  injuriously 
by  licensing  and  prohibiting  to  misdoubt  her  strength. 
Let  her  and  falsehood  grapple;  who  ever  knew  truth  put 
to  the  worse  in  a  free  and  open  encounter?  Her  confuting 
is  the  best  and  surest  suppressing.  He  who  hears  what 
praying  there  is  for  light  and  clearer  knowledge  to  be  sent 
down  among  us,  would  think  of  other  matters  to  be  con- 
stituted beyond  the  discipline  of  Geneva,  framed  and 
fabricked  already  to  our  hands.  Yet  when  the  new  light 
which  we  beg  for  shines  in  upon  us,  there  be  who  envy 
and  oppose  if  it  come  not  first  in  at  their  casements.  What 
a  collusion  is  this,  when  as  we  are  exhorted  by  the  wise 
man  to  use  diligence,  to  seek  for  wisdom  as  for  hidden 
treasures  early  and  late,  that  another  order  shall  enjoin 
us  to  know  nothing  but  by  statute.  When  a  man  hath  been 
labouring  the  hardest  labour  in  the  deep  mines  of  knowl- 
edge, hath  furnished  out  his  findings  in  all  their  equipage, 
drawn  forth  his  reasons  as  it  were  a  battle  ranged,  scattered, 
and  defeated  all  objections  in  his  way,  calls  out  his  adver- 
sary into  the  plain,  offers  him  the  advantage  of  wind  and 
sun,  if  he  please,  only  that  he  may  try  the  matter  by  dint 
of  argument,  for  his  opponents  then  to  skulk,  to  lay  am- 
bushments,  to  keep  a  narrow  bridge  of  licensing  where 
the  challenger  should  pass,  though  it  be  valour  enough  in 
soldiership,  is  but  weakness  and  cowardice  in  the  wars  of 
truth.  For  who  knows  not  that  truth  is  strong  next  to 
the  Almighty?  She  needs  no  policies,  no  stratagems,  nor 
licensings  to  make  her  victorious;  those  are  the  shifts  and 
the  defences  that  error  uses  against  her  power.  Give  her 
but  room,  and  do  not  bind  her  when  she  sleeps,  for  then 
she  speaks  not  true,  as  the  old  Proteus  did,  who  spake 
oracles  only  when  he  was  caught  and  bound;  but  then 
rather  she  turns  herself  into  all  shapes  except  her  own,  and 
perhaps  tunes  her  voice  according  to  the  time,  as  Micaiah 
did  before  Ahab,  until  she  be  adjured  into  her  own  likeness. 
Yet  is  it  not  impossible  that  she  may  have  more  shapes 


AREOPAGITICA 


141 


than  one.  What  else  is  all  that  rank  of  things  indifferent, 
wherein  truth  may  be  on  this  side  or  on  the  other  without 
being  unlike  herself?  What  but  a  vain  shadow  else  is  the 
abolition  of  those  ordinances,  that  handwriting  nailed  to 
the  cross,  what  great  purchase  is  this  Christian  liberty 
which  Paul  so  often  boasts  of?  His  doctrine  is  that  he 
who  eats  or  eats  not,  regards  a  day  or  regards  it  not,  may 
do  either  to  the  Lord.  How  many  other  things  might  be 
tolerated  in  peace  and  left  to  conscience  had  we  but  char- 
ity, and  were  it  not  the  chief  stronghold  of  our  hypocrisy 
to  be  ever  judging  one  another!  I  fear  yet  this  iron  yoke  of 
outward  conformity  hath  left  a  slavish  print  upon  our  necks; 
the  ghost  of  a  linen  decency  yet  haunts  us.  We  stumble 
and  are  impatient  at  the  least  dividing  of  one  visible  con- 
gregation from  another,  though  it  be  not  in  fundamentals; 
and  through  orr  forwardness  to  suppress  and  our  back- 
wardness to  recover  any  enthralled  piece  of  truth  out  of 
the  grip  of  custom,  we  care  not  to  keep  truth  separated 
from  truth,  which  is  the  fiercest  rent  and  disunion  of  all. 
We  do  not  see  that,  while  we  still  affect  by  all  means  a 
rigid  external  formality,  we  may  as  soon  fall  again  into  a 
gross  conforming  stupidity,  a  stark  and  dead  congealment 
of  wood  and  hay  and  stubble  forced  and  frozen  together, 
which  is  more  to  the  sudden  degenerating  of  a  church  than 
many  subdichotomies  of  petty  schisms.  Not  that  I  can 
think  well  of  every  light  separation,  or  that  all  in  a  church 
is  to  be  expected  gold  and  silver  and  precious  stones;  it 
is  not  possible  for  man  to  sever  the  wheat  from  the  tares, 
the  good  fish  from  the  other  fry;  that  must  be  the  angels' 
ministry  at  the  end  of  mortal  things.  Yet  if  all  can  not 
be  of  one  mind — as  who  looks  they  should  be? — this  doubt- 
less is  more  wholesome,  more  prudent,  and  more  Christian: 
that  many  be  tolerated  rather  than  all  compelled.  I  mean 
not  tolerated  Popery  and  open  superstition,  which  as  it 
extirpates  all  religions  and  civil  supremacies,  so  itself 
should  be  extirpated,  provided  first  that  all  charitable  and 
compassionate  means  be  used  to  win  and  regain  the  weak 
and  misled;  that  also  which  is  impious  or  evil  absolutely 
either  against  faith  or  manners  no  law  can  possibly  permit, 
that  intends  not  to  unlaw  itself;  but  those  neighbouring 
differences,  or  rather  indifferences,  are  what  I  speak  of, 
10 


1 42 


MILTON 


whether  in  some  point  of  doctrine  or  of  discipline,  which 
though  they  may  be  many,  yet  need  not  interrupt  the  unity 
of  spirit,  if  we  could  but  find  among  us  the  bond  of  peace. 
In  the  meanwhile  if  any  one  would  write,  and  bring  his 
helpful  hand  to  the  slow-moving  reformation  which  we 
labour  under,  if  truth  have  spoken  to  him  before  others,  or 
but  seemed  at  least  to  speak,  who  hath  so  bejesuited  us 
that  we  should  trouble  that  man  with  asking  license  to  do 
so  worthy  a  deed?  And  not  consider  this,  that  if  it  come 
to  prohibiting,  there  is  not  aught  more  likely  to  be  pro- 
hibited than  truth  itself  whose  first  appearance  to  our  eyes, 
bleared  and  dimmed  with  prejudice  and  custom,  is  more 
unsightly  and  unplausible  than  many  errors,  even  as  the 
person  is  of  many  a  great  man  slight  and  contemptible 
to  see  to.  And  what  do  they  tell  us  vainly  of  new  opin- 
ions, when  this  very  opinion  of  theirs,  that  none  must  be 
heard  but  whom  they  like,  is  the  worst  and  newest  opinion 
of  all  others;  and  is  the  chief  cause  why  sects  and  schisms 
do  so  much  abound,  and  true  knowledge  is  kept  at  dis- 
tance from  us?  Besides  yet  a  greater  danger  which  is  in 
it:  for  when  God  shakes  a  kingdom  with  strong  and  health- 
ful commotions  to  a  general  reforming,  it  is  not  untrue 
that  many  sectaries  and  false  teachers  are  then  busiest  in 
seducing;  but  yet  more  true  it  is  that  God  then  raises  to 
his  own  work  men  of  rare  abilities  and  more  than  common 
industry,  not  only  to  look  back  and  revise  what  hath  been 
taught  heretofore,  but  to  gain  further  and  go  on  some  new 
enlightened  steps  in  the  discovery  of  truth.  For  such  is 
the  order  of  God's  enlightening  his  Church,  to  dispense  and 
deal  out  by  degrees  his  beam,  so  as  our  earthly  eyes  may 
best  sustain  it.  Neither  is  God  appointed  and  confined, 
where  and  out  of  what  place  these  his  chosen  shall  be  first 
heard  to  speak;  for  he  sees  not  as  man  sees,  chooses  not 
as  man  chooses,  lest  we  should  devote  ourselves  again  to 
set  places  and  assemblies  and  outward  callings  of  men, 
planting  our  faith  one  while  in  the  old  Convocation  house, 
and  another  while  in  the  chapel  at  Westminster;  when 
all  the  faith  and  religion  that  shall  be  there  canonized  is 
not  sufficient,  without  plain  convincement  and  the  charity 
of  patient  instruction,  to  supple  the  least  bruise  of  con- 
science, to  edify  the  meanest  Christian,  who  desires  to  walk 


AREOPAGITICA  j^ 

in  the  spirit  and  not  in  the  letter  of  human  trust,  for  all 
the  number  of  voices  that  can  be  there  made;  no,  though 
Harry  VII  himself  there,  with  all  his  liege  tombs  about 
him,  should  lend  them  voices  from  the  dead  to  swell  their 
number.  And  if  the  men  be  erroneous  who  appear  to  be 
the  leading  schismatics,  what  withholds  us  but  our  sloth, 
our  self-will,  and  distrust  in  the  right  cause,  that  we  do  not 
give  them  gentle  meetings  and  gentle  dismissions,  that  we 
debate  not  and  examine  the  matter  thoroughly  with  liberal 
and  frequent  audience;  if  not  for  their  sakes,  yet  for  our 
own,  seeing  no  man  who  hath  tasted  learning  but  will  con- 
fess the  many  ways  of  profiting  by  those  who,  not  con- 
tented with  stale  receipts,  are  able  to  manage  and  set  forth 
new  positions  to  the  world?  And  were  they  but  as  the 
dust  and  cinders  of  our  feet,  so  long  as  in  that  notion  they 
may  serve  to  polish  and  brighten  the  armoury  of  truth, 
even  for  that  respect  they  were  not  utterly  to  be  cast  away. 
But  if  they  be  of  those  whom  God  hath  fitted  for  the  special 
use  of  these  times  with  eminent  and  ample  gifts,  and  those, 
perhaps,  neither  among  the  priests  nor  among  the  Phari- 
sees, and  we,  in  the  haste  of  a  precipitant  zeal,  shall  make 
no  distinction,  but  resolve  to  stop  their  mouths,  because 
we  fear  they  come  with  new  and  dangerous  opinions,  as 
we  commonly  forejudge  them  ere  we  understand  them,  no> 
less  then  woe  to  us,  while,  thinking  thus  to  defend  the 
Gospel,  we  are  found  the  persecutors. 

There  have  been  not  a  few  since  the  beginning  of  this 
Parliament,  both  of  the  presbytery  and  others,  who  by 
their  unlicensed  books  to  the  contempt  of  an  imprimatur 
first  broke  that  triple  ice  clung  about  our  hearts,  and 
taught  the  people  to  see  day.  I  hope  that  none  of  those 
were  the  persuaders  to  renew  upon  us  this  bondage  which 
they  themselves  have  wrought  so  much  good  by  contemn- 
ing. But  if  neither  the  check  that. Moses  gave  to  young 
Joshua,  nor  the  countermand  which  our  Saviour  gave  to 
young  John,  who  was  so  ready  to  prohibit  those  whom 
he  thought  unlicensed,  be  not  enough  to  admonish  our 
elders  how  unacceptable  to  God  their  testy  mood  of  pro- 
hibiting is,  if  neither  their  own  remembrance  what  evil 
hath  abounded  in  the  Church  by  this  let  of  licensing,  and 
what  good  they  themselves  have  begun  by  transgressing 


144  MILTON 

it,  be  not  enough,  but  that  they  will  persuade  and  execute 
the  most  Dominican  part  of  the  Inquisition  over  us,  and 
are  already  with  one  foot  in  the  stirrup  so  active  in  suppress- 
ing, it  would  be  no  unequal  distribution  in  the  first  place 
to  suppress  the  suppressors  themselves,  whom  the  change 
of  their  condition  hath  puffed  up  more  than  their  late  ex- 
perience of  harder  times  hath  made  wise. 

And  as  for  regulating  the  press,  let  no  man  think  to 
have  the  honour  of  advising  ye  better  than  yourselves  have 
done  in  that  order  published  next  before  this:  that  no 
book  be  printed,  unless  the  printer's  and  the  author's 
name,  or  at  least  the  printer's,  be  registered.  Those  which 
otherwise  come  forth,  if  they  be  found  mischievous  and 
libellous,  the  fire  and  the  executioner  will  be  the  timeliest 
and  the  most  effectual  remedy  that  man's  prevention  can 
use.  For  this  authentic  Spanish  policy  of  licensing  books, 
if  I  have  said  aught,  will  prove  the  most  unlicensed  book 
itself  within  a  short  while;  and  was  the  immediate  image 
of  a  Star  Chamber  decree  to  that  purpose  made  in  those 
very  times  when  that  court  did  the  rest  of  those  her  pious 
works,  for  which  she  is  now  fallen  from  the  stars  with 
Lucifer.  Whereby  ye  may  guess  what  kind  of  state  pru- 
dence, what  love  of  the  people,  what  care  of  religion  or 
good  manners  there  was  at  the  contriving,  although  with 
singular  hypocrisy  it  pretended  to  bind  books  to  their  good 
behaviour.  And  how  it  got  the  upper  hand  of  your  pre- 
cedent order  so  well  constituted  before,  if  we  may  believe 
those  men  whose  profession  gives  them  cause  to  inquire 
most,  it  may  be  doubted  there  was  in  it  the  fraud  of  some 
old  patentees  and  monopolizers  in  the  trade  of  book-sell- 
ing, who,  under  pretence  of  the  poor  in  their  company  not 
to  be  defrauded,  and  the  just  retaining  of  each  man  his 
several  copy,  which  God  forbid  should  be  gainsaid,  brought 
divers  glozing  colours  to  the  House,  which  were  indeed 
but  colours,  and  serving  to  no  end  except  it  be  to  exercise 
a  superiority  over  their  neighbours,  men  who  do  not  there- 
fore labour  in  an  honest  profession  to  which  learning  is 
indebted,  that  they  should  be  made  other  men's  vassals. 
Another  end  is  thought  was  aimed  at  by  some  of  them  in 
procuring  by  petition  this  order,  that  having  power  in  their 
hands,  malignant  books  might  the  easier  escape  abroad, 


AREOPAGITICA 


145 


as  the  event  shows.  But  of  these  sophisms  and  elenchs 
of  merchandise  I  skill  not.  This  I  know,  that  errors  in 
a  good  government  and  in  a  bad  are  equally  almost  inci- 
dent; for  what  magistrate  may  not  be  misinformed,  and 
much  the  sooner,  if  liberty  of  printing  be  reduced  into  the 
power  of  a  few?  But  to  redress  willingly  and  speedily  what 
hath  been  erred,  and  in  highest  authority  to  esteem  a  plain 
advertisement  more  than  others  have  done  a  sumptuous 
bribe,  is  a  virtue  (honoured  Lords  and  Commons)  answer- 
able to  your  highest  actions,  and  whereof  none  can  par- 
ticipate but  greatest  and  wisest  men. 


A  DISCOURSE,  BY  WAY  OF  VISION, 
CONCERNING  THE  GOVERN- 
MENT OF  OLIVER  CROMWELL 


BY 

ABRAHAM   COWLEY 


ABRAHAM  COWLEY  was  the  posthumous  son  of  a  London  tradesman, 
and  was  born  in  that  city  in  1618.  His  mother  had  a  copy  of  Spenser, 
and  from  reading  this  the  boy  (as  he  himself  relates)  determined  to  be 
a  poet.  At  the  age  of  ten  he  wrote  a  tragical  poem,  and  at  the  age  of 
twelve  another.  He  was  sent  to  Westminster  School,  and  there  pro- 
duced a  comedy.  In  1636  he  was  entered  as  a  student  at  Cambridge, 
where  he  continued  to  write  plays  and  poems,  in  Latin  and  in  English. 
He  saw  Prince  Charles  when  he  passed  through  Cambridge  on  his  way 
to  York,  and  became  an  ardent  Royalist — so  ardent  that  he  had  to  leave 
Cambridge.  He  went  to  Paris,  became  secretary  to  Lord  Jermin,  and 
spent  nearly  all  his  time  in  "ciphering  and  deciphering  the  letters  that 
passed  between  the  king  and  the  queen."  In  1656  he  was  sent  to  Eng- 
land, where  he  was  arrested  as  a  spy,  and  found  difficulty  in  securing  a 
release  on  bail.  He  published  his  poems  that  year,  and  in  the  preface 
declared  that  "  his  desire  had  been  for  some  time  past,  and  did  even  now 
vehemently  continue,  to  retire  himself  to  some  of  the  American  planta- 
tions and  to  forsake  this  world  forever."  He  obtained  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Physic  in  1657,  studied  botany,  and  practised  as  a  physician. 
At  the  Restoration  he  expected  a  reward  for  his  loyalty,  but  he  did  not 
get  it ;  and  his  old  comedy,  rewritten,  was  brought  out  under  a  new 
name,  when  it  was  mistaken  for  a  satire  on  the  Royalists  and  was  a  fail- 
ure. He  was  reduced  to  poverty,  and  obliged  to  give  up  any  hope  of 
living  either  by  political  preferment  or  by  literary  production.  Obtain- 
ing a  lease  of  farm  lands  in  Surrey,  he  tried  agriculture  ;  but  in  this  he 
was  hardly  more  fortunate.  He  wrote  to  a  friend,  "  I  can  get  no  money 
from  my  tenants,  and  my  meadows  are  eaten  up  every  night  by  cattle 
put  in  by  my  neighbours."  He  died  at  the  Porch  House,  Chertsey,  July 
28,  1667.  The  recognition  that  he  failed  to  get  in  life  was  accorded  to 
him  after  death.  He  was  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  near  Chaucer 
and  Spenser,  the  king  pronounced  a  eulogy  upon  him,  and  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham  erected  a  monument.  His  poetry,  once  thought  to  be  great, 
has  long  since  gone  out  of  fashion  ;  but  his  essays  hold  their  place  among 
the  classics  of  English  prose.  The  poet  Campbell  wrote,  "Cowley's 
prose  stamps  him  as  a  man  of  genius  and  an  improver  of  the  English 
language." 


THE   GOVERNMENT  OF  OLIVER  CROMWELL 

IT  was  the  funeral  day  of  the  late  man  who  made  him- 
self to  be  called  Protector.  And  though  I  bore  but 
little  affection  either  to  the  memory  of  him  or  to  the 
trouble  and  folly  of  all  public  pageantry,  yet  I  was  forced, 
by  the  importunity  of  my  company,  to  go  along  with  them, 
and  be  a  spectator  of  that  solemnity,  the  expectation  of 
which  had  been  so  great,  that  it  was  said  to  have  brought 
some  very  curious  persons  (and  no  doubt  singular  vir- 
tuosos) as  far  as  from  the  Mount  in  Cornwall,  and  from 
the  Orcades.  I  found  there  had  been  much  more  cost 
bestowed  than  either  the  dead  man,  or  indeed  death  itself, 
could  deserve.  There  was  a  mighty  train  of  black  assist- 
ants, among  which,  too,  divers  princes  in  the  persons  of 
their  ambassadors  (being  infinitely  afflicted  for  the  loss  of 
their  brother)  were  pleased  to  attend;  the  hearse  was  mag- 
nificent, the  idol  crowned,  and  (not  to  mention  all  other 
ceremonies  which  are  practised  at  royal  interments,  and 
therefore  by  no  means  could  be  omitted  here)  the  vast  mul- 
titude of  spectators  made  up,  as  it  uses  to  do,  no  small 
part  of  the  spectacle  itself.  But  yet,  I  know  not  how,  the 
whole  was  so  managed  that,  methought,  it  somewhat  repre- 
sented the  life  of  him  for  whom  it  was  made:  much  noise, 
much  tumult,  much  expense,  much  magnificence,  much 
vainglory;  briefly,  a  great  show;  and  yet,  after  all  this, 
but  an  ill  sight.  At  last  (for  it  seemed  long  to  me,  and, 
like  his  short  reign  too,  very  tedious)  the  whole  scene 
passed  by,  and  I  retired  back  to  my  chamber,  weary,  and 
I  think  more  melancholy  than  any  of  the  mourners,  where 
I  began  to  reflect  on  the  whole  life  of  this  prodigious 
man;  and  sometimes  I  was  filled  with  horror  and  detesta- 

149 


1 50  COWLEY 

tion  of  his  actions,  and  sometimes  I  inclined  a  little  to 
reverence  an  admiration  of  his  courage,  conduct,  and  suc- 
cess; till,  by  these  different  motions  and  agitations  of  mind, 
rocked,  as  it  were,  asleep,  I  fell  at  last  into  this  vision;  or 
if  you  please  to  call  it  but  a  dream,  I  shall  not  take  it 
ill,  because  the  father  of  poets  tells  us  even  dreams,  too, 
are  from  God. 

But  sure  it  was  no  dream,  for  I  was  suddenly  trans- 
ported afar  off  (whether  in  the  body,  or  out  of  the  body, 
like  St.  Paul,  I  know  not)  and  found  myself  on  the  top 
of  that  famous  hill  in  the  island  Mona,  which  has  the  pros- 
pect of  three  great,  and  not-long-since  most  happy,  king- 
doms. As  soon  as  ever  I  looked  on  them,  the  not-long- 
since  struck  upon  my  memory,  and  called  forth  the  sad 
representation  of  all  the  sins  and  all  the  miseries  that 
had  overwhelmed  them  these  twenty  years.  And  I  wept 
bitterly  for  two  or  three  hours;  and,  when  my  present  stock 
of  moisture  was  all  wasted,  I  fell  a-sighing  for  an  hour 
more;  and  as  soon  as  I  recovered  from  my  passion  the 
use  of  speech  and  reason,  I  broke  forth,  as  I  remember 
(looking  upon  England),  into  this  complaint: 

"  Ah,  happy  isle,  how  art  thou  changed  and  curst, 

Since  I  was  born,  and  knew  thee  first! 
When  peace,  which  had  forsook  the  world  around, 
(Frighted  with  noise,  and  the  shrill  trumpet's  sound) 

Thee,  for  a  private  place  of  rest, 

And  a  secure  retirement,  chose 

Wherein  to  build  her  halcyon  nest; 
No  wind  durst  stir  abroad,  the  air  to  discompose. 

"  When  all  the  riches  of  the  globe  beside 

Flowed  in  to  thee  with  every  tide: 
When  all,  that  Nature  did  thy  soil  deny, 
The  growth  was  of  thy  fruitful  industry; 

When  all  the  proud  and  dreadful  sea 

And  all  his  tributary  streams, 

A  constant  tribute  paid  to  thee, 
When  all  the  liquid  world  was  one  extended  Thames; 

"  When  plenty  in  each  village  did  appear, 

And  bounty  was  its  steward  there; 
When  gold  walked  free  about  in  open  view, 
Ere  it  one  conquering  party's  prisoner  grew; 

When  the  religion  of  our  state 

Had  face  and  substance  with  her  voice, 

Ere  she,  by  her  foolish  loves  of  late, 
Like  echo  (once  a  nymph)  turned  only  into  noise. 


GOVERNMENT   OF  OLIVER   CROMWELL  15! 

"  When  men  to  men  respect  and  friendship  bore, 

And  God  with  reverence  did  adore; 
When  upon  earth  no  kingdom  could  have  shown 
A  happier  monarch  to  us  than  our  own; 

And  yet  his  subjects  by  him  were 

(Which  is  a  truth  will  hardly  be 

Received  by  any  vulgar  ear, 
A  secret  known  to  few)  made  happier  ev'n  than  he. 

"  Thou  dost  a  chaos,  and  confusion  now, 

A  babel,  and  a  bedlam,  grow, 
And,  like  a  frantic  person,  thou  dost  tear 
The  ornaments  and  cloaths,  which  thou  shouldst  wear, 

And  cut  thy  limbs;  and,  if  we  see 

(Just  as  thy  barbarous  Britons  did) 

Thy  body  with  hypocrisy 
Painted  all  o'er,  thou  think'st,  thy  naked  shame  is  hid. 

"  The  nations,  which  envied  thee  erewhile, 

Now  laugh  (too  little  'tis  to  smile): 
They  laugh,  and  would  have  pitied  thee  (alas!) 
But  that  lay  faults  all  pity  do  surpass. 

Art  thou  the  country,  which  didst  hate 

And  mock  the  French  inconstancy? 

And  have  we,  have  we  seen  of  late 
Less  change  of  habits  there  than  governments  in  thee? 

"  Unhappy  isle!  no  ship  of  thine  at  sea 

Was  ever  tossed  and  torn  like  thee. 
Thy  naked  hulk  loose  on  the  waves  does  beat, 
The  rocks  and  banks  around  her  ruin  threat; 

What  did  thy  foolish  pilots  ail, 

To  lay  the  compass  quite  aside? 

Without  a  law  or  rule  to  sail, 
And  rather  take  the  winds,  than  heavens,  to  be  their  guide? 

"  Yet,  mighty  God,  yet,  yet,  we  humbly  crave, 

This  floating  isle  from  shipwreck  save; 
And  though,  to  wash  that  blood  which  does  it  stain, 
It  well  deserve  to  sink  into  the  main; 

Yet,  for  the  royal  martyr's  prayer, 

(The  royal  martyr  prays,  we  know) 

This  guilty,  perishing  vessel  spare; 
Hear  but  his  soul  above,  and  not  his  blood  below." 

I  think  I  should  have  gone  on,  but  that  I  was  inter- 
rupted by  a  strange  and  terrible  apparition;  for  there  ap- 
peared to  me  (arising  out  of  the  earth,1  as  I  conceived)  the 
figure  of  a  man,  taller  than  a  giant,  or,  indeed,  the  shadow 
of  any  giant  in  the  evening.  His  body  was  naked,  but 
that  nakedness  adorned,  or  rather  deformed  all  over,  with 
several  figures,  after  the  manner  of  the  ancient  Britons, 
painted  upon  it;  and  I  perceived  that  most  of  them  were 


152 


COWLEY 


the  representation  of  the  late  battles  in  our  civil  wars,  and 
(if  I  be  not  much  mistaken)  it  was  the  battle  of  Naseby 
that  was  drawn  upon  his  breast.  His  eyes  were  like  burn- 
ing brass,  and  there  were  three  crowns  of  the  same  metal 
(as  I  guessed),  and  that  looked  as  red-hot,  too,  upon  his 
head.2  He  held  in  his  right  hand  a  sword  that  was  yet 
bloody,  and  nevertheless  the  motto  of  it  was,  Pax  quaeritur 
bello;  and  in  his  left  hand  a  thick  book,  upon  the  back  of 
which  was  written  in  letters  of  gold,  Acts,  Ordinances, 
Protestations,  Covenants,  Engagements,  Declarations,  Re- 
monstrances, etc. 

Though  this  sudden,  unusual,  and  dreadful  object 
might  have  quelled  a  greater  courage  than  mine,  yat  so 
it  pleased  God  (for  there  is  nothing  bolder  than  a  man  in 
a  vision)  that  I  was  not  at  all  daunted,  but  asked  him  reso- 
lutely and  briefly,  "What  art  thou?  "  And  he  said,  "I 
am  called  the  northwest  principality,  his  highness,  the  Pro- 
tector of  the  Commonwealth  of  England,  Scotland,  and 
Ireland,  and  the  dominions  belonging  thereunto;  for  I  am 
that  angel  to  whom  the  Almighty  has  committed  the  gov- 
ernment of  those  three  kingdoms,  which  thou  seest  from 
this  place."  And  I  answered  and  said :  "  If  it  be  so,  sir,  it 
seems  to  me  that  for  almost  these  twenty  years  past  your 
highness  has  been  absent  from  your  charge;  for  not  only 
if  any  angel,  but  if  any  wise  and  honest  man,  had  since 
that  time  been  our  governor,  we  should  not  have  wandered 
thus  long  in  these  laborious  and  endless  labyrinths  of 
confusion,  but  either  not  have  entered  at  all  into  them, 
or  at  least  have  returned  back  ere  we  had  absolutely  lost 
our  way;  but,  instead  of  your  highness,  we  have  had  since 
such  a  protector  as  was  his  predecessor  Richard  III 
to  the  king  his  nephew;  for  he  presently  slew  the  com- 
monwealth, which  he  pretended  to  protect,  and  set  up 
himself  in  the  place  of  it;  a  little  less  guilty,  indeed,  in 
one  respect,  because  the  other  slew  an  innocent,  and  this 
man  did  but  murder  a  murderer.3  Such  a  protector  we 
have  had,  as  we  would  have  been  glad  to  have  changed 
for  an  enemy,  and  rather  received  a  constant  Turk  than 
this  every  month's  apostate;  such  a  protector,  as  man  is 
to  his  flocks,  which  he  shears,  and  sells,  or  devours  him- 
self; and  I  would  fain  know  what  the  wolf,  which  he  pro- 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL 
tects  him  from,  could  do  more?     Such  a  protector- 


153 


and  as  I  was  proceeding,  methought,  his  highness  began 
to  put  on  a  displeased  and  threatening  countenance,  as 
men  use  to  do  when  their  dearest  friends  happen  to  be 
traduced  in  their  company;  which  gave  me  the  first  rise 
of  jealousy  against  him,  for  I  did  not  believe  that  Crom- 
well, among  all  his  foreign  correspondences,  had  ever  held 
any  with  angels.  However,  I  was  not  hardened  enough 
to  venture  a  quarrel  with  him  then;  and  therefore  (as  if 
I  had  spoken  to  the  Protector  himself  in  Whitehall)  I  de- 
sired him  that  "  his  highness  would  please  to  pardon  me 
if  I  had  unwittingly  spoken  anything  to  the  disparage- 
ment of  a  person  whose  relations  to  his  highness  I  had 
not  the  honour  to  know." 

At  which  he  told  me  that  "  he  had  no  other  concern- 
ment for  his  late  highness  than  as  he  took  him  to  be  the 
greatest  man  that  ever  was  of  the  English  nation,  if  not " 
(said  he)  "  of  the  whole  world,  which  gives  me  a  just  title 
to  the  defence  of  his  reputation,  since  I  now  account  my- 
self, as  it  were,  a  naturalized  English  angel,  by  having 
had  so  long  the  management  of  the  affairs  of  that  countrey. 
And  pray,countreyman,"  said  he,  very  kindly  and  very  flat- 
teringly, "  for  I  would  not  have  you  fall  into  the  general 
error  of  the  world,  that  detests  and  decries  so  extraordi- 
nary a  virtue — what  can  be  more  extraordinary  than  that 
a  person  of  mean  birth,  no  fortune,  no  eminent  qualities 
of  body,  which  have  sometimes,  or  of  mind,  which  have 
often,  raised  men  to  the  highest  dignities,  should  have  the 
courage  to  attempt,  and  the  happiness  to  succeed  in,  so 
improbable  a  design  as  the  destruction  of  one  of  the  most 
ancient  and  most  solidly  founded  monarchies  upon  the 
earth?  that  he  should  have  the  power  or  boldness  to  put 
his  prince  and  master  to  an  open  and  infamous  death;  to 
banish  that  numerous  and  strongly  allied  family;  to  do  all 
this  under  the  name  and  wages  of  a  Parliament;  to  tram- 
ple upon  them  too  as  he  pleased,  and  spurn  them  out  of 
doors,  when  he  grew  weary  of  them;  to  raise  up  a  new 
and  unheard-of  monster  out  of  their  ashes;  to  stifle  that 
in  the  very  infancy,  and  set  up  himself  above  all  things 
that  ever  were  called  sovereign  in  England;  to  oppress  all 
his  enemies  by  arms,  and  all  his  friends  afterward  by  arti- 


COWLEY 

fice;  to  serve  all  parties  patiently  for  awhile,  and  to  com- 
mand them  victoriously  at  last;  to  overrun  each  corner  of 
the  three  nations,  and  overcome  with  equal  facility  both 
the  riches  of  the  south  and  the  poverty  of  the  north;  to 
be  feared  and  courted  by  all  foreign  princes,  and  adopted 
a  brother  to  the  gods  of  the  earth;  to  call  together  Parlia- 
ments with  a  word  of  his  pen,  and  scatter  them  again  with 
the  breath  of  his  mouth;  to  be  humbly  and  daily  petitioned 
that  he  would  please  to  be  hired,  at  the  rate  of  two  mil- 
lions a  year,  to  be  the  master  of  those  who  had  hired  him 
before  to  be  their  servant;  to  have  the  estates  and  lives  of 
three  kingdoms  as  much  at  his  disposal  as  was  the  little  in- 
heritance of  his  father,  and  to  be  as  noble  and  liberal  in 
the  spending  of  them;  and  lastly  (for  there  is  no  end  of 
all  the  particulars  of  his  glory)  to  bequeath  all  this  with 
one  word  to  his  posterity;  to  die  with  peace  at  home,  and 
triumph  abroad ;  to  be  buried  among  kings,  and  with  more 
than  regal  solemnity;  and  to  leave  a  name  behind  him, 
not  to  be  extinguished  but  with  the  whole  world;  which, 
as  it  is  now  too  little  for  his  praises,  so  might  have  been 
too  for  his  conquests,  if  the  short  line  of  his  human  life 
could  have  been  stretched  out  to  the  extent  of  his  immor- 
tal designs?  "  4 

By  this  speech,  I  began  to  understand  perfectly  well 
what  kind  of  angel  his  pretended  highness  was;  and  hav- 
ing fortified  myself  privately  with  a  short  mental  prayer, 
and  with  the  sign  of  the  cross  (not  out  of  any  superstition 
to  the  sign,  but  as  a  recognition  of  my  baptism  in  Christ),5 
I  grew  a  little  bolder,  and  replied  in  this  manner:  "  I  should 
not  venture  to  oppose  what  you  are  pleased  to  say  in 
commendation  of  the  late  great,  and  (I  confess)  extraordi- 
nary person,  but  that  I  remember  Christ  forbids  us  to 
give  assent  to  any  other  doctrine  but  what  himself  has 
taught  us,  even  though  it  should  be  delivered  by  an  angel; 
and  if  such  you  be,  sir,  it  may  be  you  have  spoken  all  this 
rather  to  try  than  to  tempt  my  frailty,  for  sure  I  am  that 
we  must  renounce  or  forget  all  the  laws  of  the  New  and 
Old  Testament,  and  those  which  are  the  foundation  of 
both,  even  the  laws  of  moral  and  natural  honesty,  if  we 
approve  of  the  actions  of  that  man  whom  I  suppose  you 
commend  by  irony. 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL 


155 


'  There  would  be  no  end  to  instance  particulars  of  all 
his  wickedness,  but  to  sum  up  a  part  of  it  briefly:  What 
can  be  more  extraordinarily  wicked  than  for  a  person,  such 
as  yourself  qualify  him  rightly,  to  endeavour  not  only  to 
exalt  himself  above,  but  to  trample  upon,  all  his  equals 
and  betters?  to  pretend  freedom  for  all  men,  and  under 
the  help  of  that  pretence  to  make  all  men  his  servants?  to 
take  arms  against  taxes  of  scarce  two  hundred  thousand 
pounds  a  year,  and  to  raise  them  himself  to  above  two 
millions?  to  quarrel  for  the  loss  of  three  or  four  ears,  and 
strike  off  three  or  four  hundred  heads?  to  fight  against 
an  imaginary  suspicion  of  I  know  not  what  two  thousand 
guards  to  be  fetched  for  the  king,  I  know  not  from  whence, 
and  to  keep  up  for  himself  no  less  than  forty  thousand? 
to  pretend  the  defence  of  Parliaments,  and  violently  to  dis- 
solve all  even  of  his  own  calling,  and  almost  choosing? 
to  undertake  the  reformation  of  religion,  to  rob  it  even  to 
the  very  skin,  and  then  to  expose  it  naked  to  the  rage  of 
all  sects  and  heresies?  to  set  up  counsels  of  rapine,  and 
courts  of  murder?  to  fight  against  the  king  under  a  com- 
mission for  him;  to  take  him  forcibly  out  of  the  hands  of 
those  for  whom  he  had  conquered  him;  to  draw  him  into 
his  net,  with  protestations  and  vows  of  fidelity;  and  when 
he  had  caught  him  in  it,  to  butcher  him,  with  as  little 
shame  as  conscience  or  humanity,  in  the  open  face  of  the 
whole  world?  to  receive  a  commission  for  the  king  and 
Parliament,  to  murder  (as  I  said)  the  one,  and  destroy  no 
less  impudently  the  other?  to  fight  against  monarchy 
when  he  declared  for  it,  and  declare  against  it  when  he 
contrived  for  it  in  his  own  person?  to  abuse  perfidiously 
and  supplant  ingratefully  his  own  general  6  first,  and  after- 
ward most  of  those  officers  who,  with  the  loss  of  their 
honour  and  hazard  of  their  souls,  had  lifted  him  up  to  the 
top  of  his  unreasonable  ambitions?  to  break  his  faith  with 
all  enemies  and  with  all  friends  equally?  and  to  make  no 
less  frequent  use  of  the  most  solemn  perjuries  than  the 
looser  sort  of  people  do  of  customary  oaths?  to  usurp  three 
kingdoms  without  any  shadow  of  the  least  pretensions, 
and  to  govern  them  as  unjustly  as  he  got  them?  to  set 
himself  up  as  an  idol  (which  we  know,  as  St.  Paul  says, 
in  itself  is  nothing),  and  make  the  very  streets  of  London 


156 


COWLEY 


like  the  valley  of  Hinnon,  by  burning  the  bowels  of  men 
as  a  sacrifice  to  his  molochship?  7  to  seek  to  entail  this 
usurpation  upon  his  posterity,  and  with  it  an  endless  war 
upon  the  nation?  and  lastly,  by  the  severest  judgment  of 
Almighty  God,  to  die  hardened,  and  mad,  and  unrepentant, 
with  the  curses  of  the  present  age,  and  the  detestation  of 
all  to  succeed?  " 

Though  I  had  much  more  to  say  (for  the  life  of  man 
is  so  short  that  it  allows  not  time  enough  to  speak  against 
a  tyrant)  ;  yet  because  I  had  a  mind  to  hear  how  my  strange 
adversary  would  behave  himself  upon  this  subject,  and  to 
give  even  the  devil  (as  they  say)  his  right,  and  fair  play  in 
a  disputation,  I  stopped  here,  and  expected  (not  without 
the  frailty  of  a  little  fear)  that  he  should  have  broken  into 
a  violent  passion  in  behalf  of  his  favourite;  but  he  on  the 
contrary  very  calmly,  and  with  the  dovelike  innocency  of 
a  serpent  that  was  not  yet  warmed  enough  to  sting,  thus 
replied  to  me: 

"  It  is  not  so  much  out  of  my  affection  to  that  person 
whom  we  discourse  of  (whose  greatness  is  too  solid  to  be 
shaken  by  the  breath  of  any  oratory),  as  for  your  own  sake 
(honest  countreyman),  whom  I  conceive  to  err  rather  by 
mistake  than  out  of  malice,  that  I  shall  endeavour  to  re- 
form your  uncharitable  and  unjust  opinion.  And,  in  the 
first  place,  I  must  needs  put  you  in  mind  of  a  sentence 
of  the  most  ancient  of  the  heathen  divines,  that  you  men 
are  acquainted  withal: 


'  'Tis  wicked  with  insulting  feet  to  tread 
Upon  the  monuments  of  the  dead.' 

And  the  intention  of  the  reproof  there  is  no  less  proper 
for  this  subject,  for  it  is  spoken  to  a  person  who  was 
proud  and  insolent  against  those  dead  men  to  whom  he 
had  been  humble  and  obedient  while  they  lived." 

"  Your  highness  may  please,"  said  I,  "  to  add  the  verse 
that  follows,  as  no  less  proper  for  this  subject: 

"  '  Whom  God's  just  doom  and  their  own  sins  have  sent 
Already  to  their  punishment/ 

"  But  I  take  this  to  be  the  rule  in  the  case,  that,  when 
we  fix  any  infamy  upon  deceased  persons,  it  should  not  be 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL 


157 


done  out  of  hatred  to  the  dead,  but  out  of  love  and  charity 
to  the  living;  that  the  curses,  which  only  remain  in  men's 
thoughts,  and  dare  not  come  forth  against  tyrants  (because 
they  are  tyrants)  while  they  are  so,  may  at  least  be  forever 
settled  and  engraven  upon  their  memories,  to  deter  all 
others  from  the  like  wickedness;  which  else,  in  the  time 
of  their  foolish  prosperity,  the  flattery  of  their  own  hearts 
and  of  other  men's  tongues  would  not  suffer  them  to  per- 
ceive. Ambition  is  so  subtle  a  tempter,  and  the  corrup- 
tion of  human  nature  so  susceptible  of  the  temptation  that 
a  man  can  hardly  resist  it,  be  he  never  so  much  forewarned 
of  the  evil  consequences;  much  less  if  he  find  not  only  the 
concurrence  of  the  present,  but  the  approbation,  too,  of 
following  ages,  which  have  the  liberty  to  judge  more  freely. 
The  mischief  of  tyranny  is  too  great,  even  in  the  shortest 
time  that  it  can  continue;  it  is  endless  and  insupportable,  if 
the  example  be  to  reign  too,  and  if  a  Lambert  must  be 
invited  to  follow  the  steps  of  a  Cromwell,  as  well  by  the 
voice  of  honour  as  by  the  sight  of  power  and  riches. 
Though  it  may  seem  to  some  fantastically,  yet  was  it  wisely 
done  of  the  Syracusans  to  implead  with  the  forms  of  their 
ordinary  justice  to  condemn  and  destroy  even  the  statues 
of  all  their  tyrants;  if  it  were  possible  to  cut  them  out  of  all 
history,  and  to  extinguish  their  very  names,  I  am  of  opin- 
ion that  it  ought  to  be  done;  but,  since  they  have  left  be- 
hind them  too  deep  wounds  to  be  ever  closed  up  without 
a  scar,  at  least  let  us  set  such  a  mark  upon  their  memory 
that  men  of  the  same  wicked  inclinations  may  be  no  less 
affrighted  with  their  lasting  ignominy  than  enticed  by  their 
momentary  glories.  And  that  your  highness  may  perceive 
that  I  speak  not  all  this  out  of  any  private  animosity 
against  the  person  of  the  late  protector,  I  assure  you, 
upon  my  faith,  that  I  bear  no  more  hatred  to  his  name 
than  I  do  to  that  of  Marius  or  Sylla,  who  never  did  me, 
or  any  friend  of  mine,  the  least  injury";  and  with  that,  trans- 
ported by  a  holy  fury,  I  fell  into  this  sudden  rapture: 

"  Curst  be  the  man  (what  do  I  wish?  as  though 

The  wretch  already  were  not  so; 
But  curst  on  let  him  be)  who  thinks  it  brave 
And  great,  his  countrey 8  to  enslave, 
Who  seeks  to  overpoise  alone 
The  balance  of  a  nation, 


158  COWLEY 

Against  the  whole  but  naked  state, 
Who  in  his  own  light  scale  makes  up  with  arms  the  weight. 

"  Who  of  his  nation  loves  to  be  the  first, 
Though  at  the  rate  of  being  worst. 
Who  would  be  rather  a  great  monster  than 
A  well-proportioned  man. 
The  son  of  earth  with  hundred  hands 
Upon  his  three-piled  mountain  stands, 
Till  thunder  strikes  him  from  the  sky; 
The  son  of  earth  again  in  his  earth's  womb  does  lie. 

"  What  blood,  confusion,  ruin,  to  obtain 

A  short  and  miserable  reign! 
In  what  oblique  and  humble  creeping  wise 

Does  the  mischievous  serpent  rise! 

But  even  his  forked  tongue  strikes  dead: 

When  he's  reared  up  his  wicked  head, 

He  murders  with  his  mortal  frown; 
A  basilisk  he  grows,  if  once  he  get  a  crown. 

"  But  no  guards  can  oppose  assaulting  fears, 

Or  undermining  tears, 
No  more  than  doors  or  close-drawn  curtains  keep 

The  swarming  dreams  out,  when  we  sleep. 

That  bloody  conscience,  too,  of  his 

(For,  oh,  a  rebel  red-coat  'tis) 

Does  here  his  early  hell  begin, 
He  sees  his  slaves  without,  his  tyrant  feels  within. 

"  Let,  gracious  God,  let  never  more  thine  hand 

Lift  up  this  rod  against  our  land. 
A  tyrant  is  a  rod  and  serpent  too, 

And  brings  worse  plagues  than  Egypt  knew. 

What  rivers  stained  with  blood  have  been! 

What  storm  and  hail-shot  have  we  seen! 

What  sores  deformed  the  ulcerous  state! 
What  darkness,  to  be  felt,  has  buried  us  of  late! 

"  How  has  it  snatched  our  flocks  and  herds  away! 

And  made  even  of  our  sons  a  prey! 
What  croaking  sects  and  vermin  has  it  sent, 

The  restless  nation  to  torment! 

What  greedy  troops,  what  armed  power 

Of  flies  and  locusts,  to  devour 

The  land,  which  everywhere  they  fill! 
Nor  fly  they,  Lord,  away;  no,  they  devour  it  still. 

"  Come  the  eleventh  plague,  rather  than  this  should  be; 

Come  sink  us  rather  in  the  sea. 
Come,  rather,  pestilence,  and  reap  us  down; 

Come  God's  sword  rather  than  our  own, 

Let  rather  Roman  come  again, 

Or  Saxon,  Norman,  or  the  Dane: 

In  all  the  bonds  we  ever  bore, 
We  grieved,  we  sighed,  we  wept;  we  never  blushed  before. 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL  159 

"  If  by  our  sins  the  divine  justice  be 

Called  to  this  last  extremity, 
Let  some  denouncing  Jonas  first  be  sent, 
To  try,  if  England  can  repent. 
Methinks,  at  least,  some  prodigy, 
Some  dreadful  comet  from  on  high, 
Should  terribly  forewarn  the  earth, 
As  of  good  princes'  deaths,  so  of  a  tyrant's  birth." 

Here,  the  spirit  of  verse  beginning  a  little  to  fail,  I 
stopped,  and  his  highness,  smiling,  said:  "I  was  glad  to 
see  you  engaged  in  the  inclosure  of  metre;  for,  if  you  had 
stayed  in  the  open  plain  of  declaiming  against  the  word 
Tyrant,  I  must  have  had  patience  for  half  a  dozen  hours, 
till  you  had  tired  yourself  as  well  as  me.  But  pray,  coun- 
treyman,  to  avoid  this  sciomachy,  or  imaginary  combat 
with  words,  let  me  know,  sir,  what  you  mean  by  the  name 
tyrant,  for  I  remember  that,  among  your  ancient  authors, 
not  only  all  kings,  but  even  Jupiter  himself  (your  juvans 
pater),  is  so  termed;  and  perhaps,  as  it  was  used  formerly 
in  a  good  sense,  so  we  shall  find  it,  upon  better  considera- 
tion, to  be  still  a  good  thing  for  the  benefit  and  peace  of 
mankind;  at  least,  it  will  appear  whether  your  interpreta- 
tion of  it  may  be  justly  applied  to  the  person  who  is  now 
the  subject  of  our  discourse." 

"  I  call  him,"  said  I,  "  a  tyrant,  who  either  intrudes 
himself  forcibly  into  the  government  of  his  fellow-citizens 
without  any  legal  authority  over  them;  or  who,  having  a 
just  title  to  the  government  of  a  people,  abuses  it  to  the 
destruction,  or  tormenting,  of  them.  So  that  all  tyrants 
are  at  the  same  time  usurpers,  either  of  the  whole,  or  at 
least  of  a  part,  of  that  power  which  they  assume  to  them- 
selves; and  no  less  are  they  to  be  accounted  rebels,  since 
no  man  can  usurp  authority  over  others,  but  by  rebelling 
against  them  who  had  it  before,  or  at  least  against  those 
laws  which  were  his  superiors:  and  in  all  these  senses  no 
history  can  afford  us  a  more  evident  example  of  tyranny, 
or  more  out  of  all  possibility  of  excuse  or  palliation,  than 
that  of  the  person  whom  you  are  pleased  to  defend; 
whether  we  consider  his  reiterated  rebellions  against  all  his 
superiors,  or  his  usurpation  of  the  supreme  power  to  him- 
self, or  his  tyranny  in  the  exercise  of  it;  and,  if  lawful 
princes  have  been  esteemed  tyrants,  by  not  containing 
themselves  within  the  bounds  of  those  laws  which  have 


l6o  COWLEY 

been  left  them,  as  the  sphere  of  their  authority,  by  their 
forefathers,  what  shall  we  say  of  that  man  who,  having 
by  right  no  power  at  all  in  this  nation,  could  not  content 
himself  with  that  which  had  satisfied  the  most  ambitious 
of  our  princes?  nay,  not  with  those  vastly  extended  limits 
of  sovereignty,  which  he  (disdaining  all  that  had  been 
prescribed  and  observed  before)  was  pleased  (out  of  great 
modesty)  to  set  to  himself;  not  abstaining  from  rebellion 
and  usurpation  even  against  his  own  laws,  as  well  as  those 
of  the  nation?  " 

"  Hold,  friend,"  said  his  highness,  pulling  me  by  my 
arm,  "  for  I  see  your  zeal  is  transporting  you  again ; 
whether  the  Protector  were  a  tyrant  in  the  exorbitant  ex- 
ercise of  his  power  we  shall  see  anon;  it  is  requisite  to 
examine,  first,  whether  he  were  so  in  the  usurpation  of 
it.  And  I  say  that  not  only  he,  but  no  man  else,  ever  was 
or  can  be  so;  and  that  for  these  reasons:  First,  because 
all  power  belongs  only  to  God,  who  is  the  source  and 
fountain  of  it,  as  kings  are  of  all  honours  in  their  do- 
minions. Princes  are  but  his  viceroys  in  the  little  prov- 
inces of  this  world;  and  to  some  he  gives  their  places  for 
a  few  years,  to  some  for  their  lives,  and  to  others  (upon 
ends  or  deserts  best  known  to  himself,  or  merely  for  his 
undisputable  good  pleasure)  he  bestows,  as  it  were,  leases 
upon  them,  and  their  posterity,  for  such  a  date  of  time 
as  is  prefixed  in  that  patent  of  their  destiny  which  is  not 
legible  to  you  men  below.  Neither  is  it  more  unlawful 
for  Oliver  to  succeed  Charles  in  the  kingdom  of  England, 
when  God  so  disposes  of  it,  than  it  had  been  for  him  to 
have  succeeded  the  Lord  Strafford  in  his  lieutenancy  of 
Ireland,  if  he  had  been  appointed  to  it  by  the  king  then 
reigning.  Men  are  in  both  the  cases  obliged  to  obey 
him  whom  they  see  actually  invested  with  the  authority 
by  that  sovereign  from  whom  he  ought  to  derive  it,  with- 
out disputing  or  examining  the  causes,  either  of  the  re- 
moval of  the  one  or  the  preferment  of  the  other.  Sec- 
ondly, because  all  power  is  attained,  either  by  the  election 
and  consent  of  the  people  (and  that  takes  away  your  ob- 
jection of  forcible  intrusion);  or  else,  by  a  conquest  of  them 
(and  that  gives  such  a  legal  authority  as  you  mention  to 
be  wanting  in  the  usurpation  of  a  tyrant);  so  that  either 


GOVERNMENT   OF  OLIVER  CROMWELL  161 

this  title  is  right,  and  then  there  are  no  usurpers,  or  else 
it  is  a  wrong  one,  and  then  there  are  none  else  but 
usurpers,  if  you  examine  the  original  pretences  of  the 
princes  of  the  world.  Thirdly  (which,  quitting  the  dispute 
in  general,  is  a  particular  justification  of  his  highness),  the 
government  of  England  was  totally  broken  and  dissolved, 
and  extinguished  by  the  confusions  of  a  civil  war,  so  that 
his  highness  could  not  be  accused  to  have  possessed  him- 
self violently  of  the  ancient  building  of  the  commonwealth, 
but  to  have  prudently  and  peacefully  built  up  a  new  one 
out  of  the  ruins  and  ashes  of  the  former;  and  he  who,  after 
a  deplorable  shipwreck,  can  with  extraordinary  industry 
gather  together  the  dispersed  and  broken  planks  and  pieces 
of  it,  and  with  no  less  wonderful  art  and  felicity  so  rejoin 
them  as  to  make  a  new  vessel  more  tight  and  beautiful 
than  the  old  one,  deserves,  no  doubt,  to  have  the  com- 
mand of  her  (even  as  his  highness  had)  by  the  desire  of  the 
seamen  and  passengers  themselves.  And  do  but  consider, 
lastly  (for  I  omit  a  multitude  of  weighty  things  that  might 
be  spoken  upon  this  noble  argument),  do  but  consider 
seriously  and  impartially  with  yourself  what  admirable 
parts  of  wit  and  prudence,  what  indefatigable  diligence 
and  invincible  courage,  must,  of  necessity,  have  con- 
curred in  the  person  of  that  man,  who,  from  so  contempt- 
ible beginnings  (as  I  observed  before),  and  through  so 
many  thousand  difficulties,  was  able  not  only  to  make  him- 
self the  greatest  and  most  absolute  monarch  of  this  nation, 
but  to  add  to  it  the  entire  conquest  of  Ireland  and  Scotland 
(which  the  whole  force  of  the  world,  joined  with  the 
Roman  virtue,  could  never  attain  to),  and  to  crown  all 
this  with  illustrious  and  heroical  undertakings  and  suc- 
cesses upon  all  our  foreign  enemies;  do  but  (I  say  again) 
consider  this,  and  you  will  confess  that  his  prodigious 
merits  were  a  better  title  to  imperial  dignity  than  the  blood 
of  a  hundred  royal  progenitors;  and  will  rather  lament 
that  he  had  lived  not  to  overcome  more  nations  than  envy 
him  the  conquest  and  dominion  of  these." 

"  Whoever  you  are,"  said  I,  my  indignation  making  me 
somewhat  bolder,  "  your  discourse,  methinks,  becomes  as 
little  the  person  of  a  tutelar  angel  as  Cromwell's  actions 
did  that  of  a  protector.  It  is  upon  these  principles  that 


!62  COWLEY 

all  the  great  crimes  of  the  world  have  been  committed, 
and  most  particularly  those  which  I  have  had  the  misfor- 
tune to  see  in  my  own  time  and  in  my  own  countrey.  If 
these  be  to  be  allowed,  we  must  break  up  human  society, 
retire  into  woods,  and  equally  there  stand  upon  our  guards 
against  our  brethren  mankind,  and  our  rebels  the  wild 
beasts.  For,  if  there  can  be  no  usurpation  upon  the  rights 
of  a  whole  nation,  there  can  be  none,  most  certainly,  upon 
those  of  a  private  person;  and,  if  the  robbers  of  countreys 
be  God's  vicegerents,  there  is  no  doubt  but  the  thieves 
and  banditos  and  murderers  are  his  under  officers.  It  is 
true,  which  you  say,  that  God  is  the  source  and  fountain 
of  all  power;  and  it  is  no  less  true  that  he  is  the  creator  of 
serpents  as  well  as  angels;  nor  does  his  goodness  fail  of 
its  ends  even  in  the  malice  of  his  own  creatures.  What 
power  he  suffers  the  devil  to  exercise  in  this  world  is  too 
apparent  by  our  daily  experience;  and  by  nothing  more 
than  the  late  monstrous  iniquities  which  you  dispute  for, 
and  patronize  in  England.  But  would  you  infer  from 
thence  that  the  power  of  the  devil  is  a  just  and  lawful  one, 
and  that  all  men  ought,  as  well  as  most  men  do,  obey  him? 
God  is  the  fountain  of  all  powers;  but  some  flow  from  the 
right  hand,  as  it  were,  of  his  goodness,  and  others  from 
the  left  hand  of  his  justice;  and  the  world,  like  an  island 
between  these  two  rivers,  is  sometimes  refreshed  and  nour- 
ished by  the  one  and  sometimes  overrun  and  ruined  by  the 
other;  and  (to  continue  a  little  further  the  allegory)  we 
are  never  overwhelmed  with  the  latter  till,  either  by  our 
malice  or  negligence,  we  have  stopped  and  dammed  up 
the  former. 

"  But  to  come  a  little  closer  to  your  argument,  or  rather 
the  image  of  an  argument,  your  similitude.  If  Cromwell 
had  come  to  command  in  Ireland  in  the  place  of  the  late 
Lord  Strafford,  I  should  have  yielded  obedience,  not  for 
the  equipage,  and  the  strength,  and  the  guards  which  he 
brought  with  him,  but  for  the  commission  which  he  should 
first  have  showed  me  from  our  common  sovereign  that 
sent  him;  and,  if  he  could  have  done  that  from  God 
Almighty,  I  would  have  obeyed  him  too  in  England; 
but  that  he  was  so  far  from  being  able  to  do  that,  on 
the  contrary,  I  read  nothing  but  commands,  and  even 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL  163 

public  proclamations,  from  God  Almighty  not  to  ad- 
mit him. 

"  Your  second  argument  is  that  he  had  the  same  right 
for  his  authority  that  is  the  foundation  of  all  others,  even 
the  right  of  conquest.  Are  we  then  so  unhappy  as  to  be 
conquered  by  the  person  whom  we  hired  at  a  daily  rate, 
like  a  labourer,  to  conquer  others  for  us?  did  we  furnish 
him  with  arms,  only  to  draw  and  try  upon  our  enemies 
(as  we,  it  seems,  falsely  thought  them),  and  keep  them 
forever  sheathed  in  the  bowels  of  his  friends?  did  we  fight 
for  liberty  against  our  prince  that  we  might  become  slaves 
to  our  servant?  This  is  such  an  impudent  pretence  as 
neither  he,  nor  any  of  his  flatterers  for  him,  had  ever  the 
face  to  mention.  Though  it  can  hardly  be  spoken  or 
thought  of  without  passion,  yet  I  shall,  if  you  please,  argue 
it  more  calmly  than  the  case  deserves. 

"  The  right,  certainly,  of  conquest  can  only  be  exercised 
upon  those  against  whom  the  war  is  declared  and  the  vic- 
tory obtained.  So  that  no  whole  nation  can  be  said  to 
be  conquered  but  by  foreign  force.  In  all  civil  wars,  men 
are  so  far  from  stating  the  quarrel  against  their  countrey 
that  they  do  it  only  against  a  person  or  party  which  they 
really  believe,  or  at  least  pretend,  to  be  pernicious  to  it; 
neither  can  there  be  any  just  cause  for  the  destruction  of 
a  part  of  the  body  but  when  it  is  done  for  the  preservation 
and  safety  of  the  whole.  It  is  our  countrey  that  raises 
men  in  the  quarrel,  our  countrey  that  arms,  our  coun- 
trey that  pays  them,  our  countrey  that  authorizes  the 
undertaking,  and,  by  that,  distinguishes  it  from  rapine  and 
murder;  lastly,  it  is  our  countrey  that  directs  and  com- 
mands the  army,  and  is  their  general.  So  that  to  say,  in 
civil  wars,  that  the  prevailing  party  conquers  their  coun- 
trey is  to  say  the  countrey  conquers  itself.  And,  if  the  gen- 
eral only  of  that  party  be  conqueror,  the  army  by  which  he 
is  made  so  is  no  less  conquered  than  the  army  which  is 
beaten,  and  have  as  little  reason  to  triumph  in  that  vic- 
tory, by  which  they  lose  both  their  honour  and  liberty.  So 
that  if  Cromwell  conquered  any  party,  it  was  only  that 
against  which  he  was  sent;  and  what  that  was  must  ap- 
pear by  his  commission.  It  was  (says  that)  against  a  com- 
pany of  evil  counsellors  and  disaffected  persons,  who  kept 


164  COWLEY 

the  king  from  a  good  intelligence  and  compunction  with 
his  people.  It  was  not  then  against  the  people.  It  is  so 
far  from  being  so  that  even  of  that  party  which  was  beaten 
the  conquest  did  not  belong  to  Cromwell,  but  to  the  Par- 
liament which  employed  him  in  their  service,  or  rather, 
indeed,  to  the  king  and  Parliament,  for  whose  service  (if 
there  had  been  any  faith  in  men's  vows  and  protestations) 
the  wars  were  undertaken.  Merciful  God!  did  the  right 
of  this  miserable  conquest  remain,  then,  in  his  majesty? 
and  didst  thou  suffer  him  to  be  destroyed,  with  more  bar- 
barity than  if  he  had  been  conquered  even  by  savages  and 
cannibals?  was  it  for  king  and  Parliament  that  we  fought, 
and  has  it  fared  with  them  just  as  with  the  army  which 
we  fought  against,  the  one  part  being  slain  and  the  other 
fled?  It  appears  therefore  plainly  that  Cromwell  was  not 
a  conqueror,  but  a  thief  and  robber  of  the  rights  of  the 
king  and  Parliament,  and  a  usurper  upon  those  of  the 
people.  I  do  not  here  deny  the  conquest  to  be  sometimes 
(though  it  be  very  rarely)  a  true  title,  but  I  deny  this  to 
be  a  true  conquest.  Sure  I  am  that  the  race  of  our  princes 
came  not  in  by  such  a  one.  One  nation  may  conquer 
another,  sometimes,  justly;  and  if  it  be  unjustly,  yet  still 
it  is  a  true  conquest,  and  they  are  to  answer  for  the  in- 
justice only  to  God  Almighty  (having  nothing  else  in  au- 
thority above  them),  and  not  as  particular  rebels  to  their 
countrey,  which  is,  and  ought  to  be,  their  superior  and  their 
lord.  If,  perhaps,  we  find  usurpation  instead  of  conquest 
in  the  original  titles  of  some  royal  families  abroad  (as,  no 
doubt,  there  have  been  many  usurpers  before  ours,  though 
none  in  so  impudent  and  execrable  a  manner),  all  I  can 
say  for  them  is  that  their  title  was  very  weak,  till,  by  length 
of  time,  and  the  death  of  all  juster  pretenders,  it  became 
to  be  the  true  because  it  was  the  only  one. 

"  Your  third  defence  of  his  highness  (as  your  highness 
pleases  to  call  him)  enters  in  most  seasonably  after  his  pre- 
tence of  conquest;  for  then  a  man  may  say  anything.  The 
government  was  broken;  who  broke  it?  It  was  dissolved; 
who  dissolved  it?  It  was  extinguished;  who  was  it,  but 
Cromwell,  who  not  only  put  out  the  light,  but  cast  away 
even  the  very  snuff  of  it?  As  if  a  man  should  murder 
a  whole  family,  and  then  possess  himself  of  the  house,  be- 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL  165 

cause  it  is  better  that  he  than  only  rats  should  live 
there.  Jesus  God!  "  said  I,  and  at  that  word  I  perceived 
my  pretended  angel  to  give  a  start  and  trembled;  but  I 
took  no  notice  of  it,  and  went  on;  "  this  were  a  wicked  pre- 
tension, even  though  the  whole  family  were  destroyed;  but 
the  heirs  (blessed  be  God)  are  yet  surviving,  and  likely 
to  outlive  all  heirs  of  their  dispossessors,  besides  their  in- 
famy. '  Rode,  caper,  vitem,'  etc.  There  will  be  yet  wine 
enough  left  for  the  sacrifice  of  those  wild  beasts  that  have 
made  so  much  spoil  in  the  vineyard.  But  did  Cromwell 
think,  like  Nero,  to  set  the  city  on  fire  only  that  he  might 
have  the  honour  of  being  founder  of  a  new  and  more 
beautiful  one?  He  could  not  have  such  a  shadow  of  virtue 
in  his  wickedness;  he  meant  only  to  rob  more  securely 
and  more  richly  in  the  midst  of  the  combustion;  he  little 
thought  then  tliat  he  should  ever  have  been  able  to  make 
himself  master  of  the  palace,  as  well  as  plunder  the  goods 
of  the  commonwealth.  He  was  glad  to  see  the  public 
vessel  (the  sovereign  of  the  seas)  in  as  desperate  a  condi- 
tion as  his  own  little  canoe,  and  thought  only,  with  some 
scattered  planks  of  that  great  shipwreck,  to  make  a  better 
fisher-boat  for  himself.  But  when  he  saw  that,  by  the 
drowning  of  the  master  (whom  he  himself  treacherously 
knocked  on  the  head  as  he  was  swimming  for  his  life),  by 
the  flight  and  dispersion  of  others,  and  cowardly  patience 
of  the  remaining  company,  that  all  was  abandoned  to  his 
pleasure;  with  the  old  hulk  and  new  misshapen  and  dis- 
agreeing pieces  of  his  own  he  made  up,  with  much  ado, 
that  piratical  vessel  which  we  have  seen  him  command,  and 
which  how  tight,  indeed,  it  was  may  best  be  judged  by  its 
perpetual  leaking. 

"  First,  then  (much  more  wicked  than  those  foolish 
daughters  in  the  fable,  who  cut  their  old  father  into  pieces, 
in  hope,  by  charms  and  witchcraft,  to  make  him  young 
and  lusty  again),  this  man  endeavoured  to  destroy  the 
building,  before  he  could  imagine  in  what  manner,  with 
what  materials,  by  what  workmen,  or  what  architect  it  was 
to  be  rebuilt.  Secondly,  if  he  had  dreamed  himself  to  be 
able  to  revive  that  body  which  he  had  killed,  yet  it  had 
been  but  the  insupportable  insolence  of  an  ignorant 
mountebank;  and,  thirdly  (which  concerns  us  nearest),  that 
ii 


166  COWLEY 

very  new  thing  which  he  made  out  of  the  ruins  of  the  old, 
is  no  more  like  the  original,  either  for  beauty,  use,  or  dura- 
tion than  an  artificial  plant,  raised  by  the  fire  of  a  chemist, 
is  comparable  to  the  true  and  natural  one  which  he  first 
burned,  that  out  of  the  ashes  of  it  he  might  produce  an 
imperfect  similitude  of  his  own  making. 

"  Your  last  argument  is  such  (when  reduced  to  syllo- 
gism), that  the  major  proposition  of  it  would  make  strange 
work  in  the  world  if  it  were  received  for  truth;  to  wit,  that 
he  who  has  the  best  parts  in  a  nation  has  the  right  of 
being  king  over  it.  We  had  enough  to  do  here  of  old 
with  the  contention  between  two  branches  of  the  same 
family.  What  would  become  of  us  when  every  man  in 
England  should  lay  his  claim  to  the  government?  And 
truly,  if  Cromwell  should  have  commenced  his  plea,  when 
he  seems  to  have  begun  his  ambition,  there  were  few  per- 
sons besides  that  might  not  at  the  same  time  have  put 
in  theirs  too.  But  his  deserts,  I  suppose,  you  will  date 
from  the  same  term  that  I  do  his  great  demerits,  that  is, 
from  the  beginning  of  our  late  calamities  (for,  as  for  his 
private  faults  before,  I  can  only  wish,  and  that  with  as 
much  charity  to  him  as  to  the  public,  that  he  had  continued 
in  them  till  his  death,  rather  than  changed  them  for  those 
of  his  latter  days),  and  therefore,  we  must  begin  the  con- 
sideration of  his  greatness  from  the  unlucky  era  of  our 
own  misfortunes,  which  puts  me  in  mind  of  what  was  said 
less  truly  of  Pompey  the  Great,  '  Nostra  miseria  magnus 
es.'  But,  because  the  general  ground  of  your  argumenta- 
tion consists  in  this,  that  all  men  who  are  the  effecters  of 
extraordinary  mutations  in  the  world,  must  needs  have 
extraordinary  forces  of  Nature  by  which  they  are  enabled 
to  turn  about,  as  they  please,  so  great  a  wheel;  I  shall 
speak,  first,  a  few  words  upon  this  universal  proposition, 
which  seems  so  reasonable,  and  is  so  popular,  before  I 
descend  to  the  particular  examination  of  the  eminences  of 
that  person  which  is  in  question. 

"  I  have  often  observed  (with  all  submission  and  resig- 
nation of  spirit  to  the  inscrutable  mysteries  of  Eternal 
Providence),  that,  when  the  fulness  and  maturity  of  time  is 
come,  that  produces  the  great  confusions  and  changes  in 
the  world,  it  usually  pleases  God  to  make  it  appear,  by 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL  167 

the  manner  of  them,  that  they  are  not  the  effects  of  human 
force  or  policy,  but  of  the  divine  justice  and  predestina- 
tion; and,  though  we  see  a  man,  like  that  which  we  call 
Jack  of  the  clock-house,  striking,  as  it  were,  the  hour  of 
that  fulness  of  time,  yet  our  reason  must  needs  be  con- 
vinced that  his  hand  is  moved  by  some  secret,  and,  to  us 
who  stand  without,  invisible  direction.  And  the  stream  of 
the  current  is  then  so  violent  that  the  strongest  men  in 
the  world  can  not  draw  up  against  it;  and  none  are  so 
weak  but  they  may  sail  down  with  it.  These  are  the  spring- 
tides of  public  affairs,  which  we  see  often  happen,  but  seek 
in  vain  to  discover  any  certain  causes: 

"  ' Omnia  fluminis  ' 

Ritu  feruntur,  nunc  medio  alveo 
Cum  pace  delabentis  Etruscum 

In  mare,  nunc  lapides  adesos, 
Stirpesque  raptas,  et  pecus,  et  domos 
Volventis  una,  non  sine  montium 
Clamore,  vicinaeque  sylvae; 

Cum  fera  diluvies  quietos 
Irritat  amnes.'     (Hor.,  3,  Carm.,  xxix.) 

And  one  man  then,  by  maliciously  opening  all  the  sluices 
that  he  can  come  at,  can  never  be  the  sole  author  of  all 
this  (though  he  may  be  as  guilty  as  if  really  he  were,  by 
intending  and  imagining  to  be  so);  but  it  is  God  that 
breaks  up  the  flood-gates  of  so  general  a  deluge,  and  all 
the  art  then,  and  industry  of  mankind,  is  not  sufficient  to 
raise  up  dikes  and  ramparts  against  it.  In  such  a  time  it 
was,  as  this,  that  not  all  the  wisdom  and  power  of  the 
Roman  Senate,  nor  the  wit  and  eloquence  of  Cicero,  nor 
the  courage  and  virtue  of  Brutus,  was  able  to  defend  their 
countrey  or  themselves  against  the  unexperienced  rash- 
ness of  a  beardless  boy,  and  the  loose  rage  of  a  voluptuous 
madman.10  The  valour  and  prudent  counsels,  on  the  one 
side,  are  made  fruitless,  and  the  errors  and  cowardice,  on 
the  other,  harmless  by  unexpected  accidents.  The  one 
general  saves  his  life,  and  gains  the  whole  world,  by  a  very 
dream;  and  the  other  loses  both  at  once  by  a  little  mis- 
take of  the  shortness  of  his  sight.11  And  though  this  be 
not  always  so,  for  we  see  that,  in  the  translation  of  the 
great  monarchies  from  one  to  another,  it  pleased  God  to 
make  choice  of  the  most  eminent  men  in  Nature,  as  Cyrus, 


!68  COWLEY 

Alexander,  Scipio,  and  his  contemporaries,  for  his  chief 
instruments  and  actors  in  so  admirable  a  work  (the  end 
of  this  being  not  only  to  destroy  or  punish  one  nation, 
which  may  be  done  by  the  worst  of  mankind,  but  to  exalt 
and  bless  another,  which  is  only  to  be  effected  by  great 
and  virtuous  persons);  yet,  when  God  only  intends  the 
temporary  chastisement  of  a  people,  he  does  not  raise  up 
his  servant  Cyrus  (as  he  himself  is  pleased  to  call  him), 
or  an  Alexander  (who  had  as  many  virtues  to  do  good  as 
vices  to  do  harm);  but  he  makes  the  Masaniellos  and  the 
Johns  of  Leyden  the  instruments  of  his  vengeance,  that 
the  power  of  the  Almighty  might  be  more  evident  by  the 
weakness  of  the  means  which  he  chooses  to  demonstrate 
it.  He  did  not  assemble  the  serpents,  and  the  monsters 
of  Afric,  to  correct  the  pride  of  the  Egyptians,  but  called 
for  his  armies  of  locusts  out  of  Ethiopia,  and  formed  new 
ones  of  vermin  out  of  the  very  dust;  and,  because  you  see 
a  whole  countrey  destroyed  by  these,  will  you  argue  from 
thence  they  must  needs  have  had  both  the  craft  of  foxes 
and  the  courage  of  lions? 

"  It  is  easy  to  apply  this  general  observation  to  the  par- 
ticular case  of  our  troubles  in  England,  and  that  they 
seem  only  to  be  meant  for  a  temporary  chastisement  of 
our  sins,  and  not  for  a  total  abolishment  of  the  old  and 
introduction  of  a  new  government,  appears  probable  to 
me  from  these  considerations,  as  far  as  we  may  be  bold 
to  make  a  judgment  of  the  will  of  God  in  future  events. 
First,  because  he  has  suffered  nothing  to  settle,  or  take 
root,  in  the  place  of  that  which  hath  been  so  unwisely  and 
unjustly  removed,  that  none%  of  these  untempered  mortars 
can  hold  out  against  the  next  blast  of  wind,  nor  any  stone 
stick  to  a  stone,  till  that  which  these  foolish  builders  have 
refused  be  made  again  the  head  of  the  corner.  For,  when 
the  indisposed  and  long-tormented  commonwealth  has 
wearied  and  spent  itself  almost  to  nothing  with  the  charge- 
able, various,  and  dangerous  experiments  of  several 
mountebanks,  it  is  to  be  supposed,  it  will  have  the  wit  at 
last  to  send  for  a  true  physician,  especially  when  it  sees 
(which  is  the  second  consideration)  most  evidently  (as  it 
now  begins  to  do,  and  will  do  every  day  more  and  more, 
and  might  have  done  perfectly  long  since)  that  no  usurpa- 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL  169 

tion  (under  what  name  or  pretext  soever)  can  be  kept  up 
without  open  force,  nor  force  without  the  continuance  of 
those  oppressions  upon  the  people,  which  will,  at  last,  tire 
out  their  patience,  though  it  be  great  even  to  stupidity. 
They  can  not  be  so  dull  (when  poverty  and  hunger  begin 
to  whet  their  understanding)  as  not  to  find  out  this  no 
extraordinary  mystery,  that  it  is  madness  in  a  nation  to 
pay  three  millions  a  year  for  the  maintaining  of  their  servi- 
tude under  tyrants,  when  they  might  live  free  for  nothing 
under  their  princes.  This,  I  say,  will  not  always  lie  hid, 
even  to  the  slowest  capacities;  and  the  next  truth  they  will 
discover  afterward  is  that  a  whole  people  can  never  have 
the  will,  without  having,  at  the  same  time,  the  power  to 
redeem  themselves.  Thirdly,  it  does  not  look  (methinks) 
as  if  God  had  forsaken  the  family  of  that  man,  from  whom 
he  has  raised  up  five  children,  of  as  eminent  virtue,  and  all 
other  commendable  qualities,  as  ever  lived,  perhaps  (for 
so  many  together,  and  so  young),  in  any  other  family  in 
the  whole  world.  Especially,  if  we  add  hereto  this  con- 
sideration, that,  by  protecting  and  preserving  some  of 
them  already  through  as  great  dangers  as  ever  were  passed 
with  safety,  either  by  prince  or  private  person,  he  has 
given  them  already  (as  we  may  reasonably  hope  it  to  be 
meant)  a  promise  and  earnest  of  his  future  favours.  And, 
lastly  (to  return  closely  to  the  discourse  from  which  I 
have  a  little  digressed)  because  I  see  nothing  of  those 
excellent  parts  of  nature,  and  mixture  of  merit  with  their 
vices,  in  the  late  disturbers  of  our  peace  and  happiness, 
that  uses  to  be  found  in  the  persons  of  those  who  are 
born  for  the  erection  of  new  empires. 

"  And,  I  confess,  I  find  nothing  of  that  kind,  no,  not 
any  shadow  (taking  away  the  false  light  of  some  prosper- 
ity) in  the  man  whom  you  extol  for  the  first  example  of  it. 
And,  certainly,  all  virtues  being  rightly  divided  into  moral 
and  intellectual,  I  know  not  how  we  can  better  judge  of 
the  former  than  by  men's  actions;  or  of  the  latter  than 
by  their  writings  or  speeches.  As  for  these  latter  (which 
are  least  in  merit,  or,  rather,  which  are  only  the  instru- 
ments of  mischief,  where  the  other  are  wanting),  I  think 
you  can  hardly  pick  out  the  name  of  a  man  who  ever  was 
called  great,  besides  him  we  are  now  speaking  of,  who 


COWLEY 

never  left  the  memory  behind  him  of  one  wise  or  witty 
apophthegm  even  among  his  domestic  servants  or  greatest 
flatterers.  That  little  in  print,  which  remains  upon  a  sad 
record  for  him,  is  such  as  a  satire  against  him  would  not 
have  made  him  say,  for  fear  of  transgressing  too  much  the 
rules  of  probability.  I  know  not  what  you  can  produce 
for  the  justification  of  his  parts  in  this  kind,  but  his  having 
been  able  to  deceive  so  many  particular  persons,  and  so 
many  whole  parties;  which,  if  you  please  to  take  notice 
of  for  the  advantage  of  his  intellectuals,  I  desire  you  to 
allow  me  the  liberty  to  do  so  too  when  I  am  to  speak  of 
his  morals.  The  truth  of  the  thing  is  this,  that  if  craft 
be  wisdom,  and  dissimulation  wit  (assisted  both  and  im- 
proved with  hypocrisies  and  perjuries),  I  must  not  deny 
him  to  have  been  singular  in  both;  but  so  gross  was  the 
manner  in  which  he  made  use  of  them,  that,  as  wise  men 
ought  not  to  have  believed  him  at  first,  so  no  man  was  fool 
enough  to  believe  him  at  last;  neither  did  any  man  seem 
to  do  it,  but  those  who  thought  they  gained  as  much  by 
that  dissembling,  as  he  did  by  his.  His  very  actings  of 
godliness  grew  at  last  as  ridiculous,  as  if  a  player,  by 
putting  on  a  gown,  should  think  he  represented  excellently 
a  woman,  though  his  beard,  at  the  same  time,  were  seen 
by  all  the  spectators.  If  you  ask  me  why  they  did  not 
hiss,  and  explode  him  off  the  stage,  I  can  only  answer  that 
they  durst  not  do  so,  because  the  actors  and  the  door- 
keepers were  too  strong  for  the  company.  I  must  confess 
that  by  these  arts  (how  grossly  soever  managed,  as  by 
hypocritical  praying  and  silly  preaching,  by  unmanly  tears 
and  whinings,  by  falsehoods  and  perjuries  even  diabolical) 
he  had  at  first  the  good  fortune  (as  men  call  it,  that  is,  the 
ill  fortune)  to  attain  his  ends;  but  it  was  because  his  ends 
were  so  unreasonable  that  no  human  reason  could  foresee 
them;  which  made  them  who  had  to  do  with  him  be- 
lieve that  he  was  rather  a  well-meaning  and  deluded  bigot 
than  a  crafty  and  malicious  impostor;  that  these  arts  were 
helped  by  an  indefatigable  industry  (as  you  term  it),  I 
am  so  far  from  doubting  that  I  intended  to  object  that 
diligence  as  the  worst  of  his  crimes.  It  makes  me  almost 
mad  when  I  hear  a  man  commended  for  his  diligence  in 
wickedness.  If  I  were  his  son  I  should  wish  to  God  he 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL  iyi 

had  been  a  more  lazy  person,  and  that  we  might  have 
found  him  sleeping  at  the  hours  when  other  men  are  ordi- 
narily waking,  rather  than  waking  for  those  ends  of  his 
when  other  men  were  ordinarily  asleep.  How  diligent  the 
wicked  are,  the  Scripture  often  tells  us:  '  Their  feet  run  to 
evil,  and  they  make  haste  to  shed  innocent  blood,'  Isa. 
lix,  7.  '  He  travels  with  iniquity/  Ps.  vii,  14.  '  He  xfe- 
viseth  mischief  upon  his  bed/  Ps.  xxxiv,  4.  '  They  'search 
out  iniquity,  they  accomplish  a  diligent  search/  Ps.  Ixiv,  6; 
and  in  a  multitude  of  other  places.  ,  And  would  it  not 
seem  ridiculous  to  praise  a  wolf  for  his  watchfulness,  and 
for  his  indefatigable  industry  in  ranging  all  night  about 
the  country,  while  the  sheep,  ,and  perhaps  the  shepherd, 
and  perhaps  the  very  4ag's,  too,  are  all  asleep? 

'  The  Chartreux  wants  the  warning  of  a  bell 
To  call  him  to  the  duties  of  his  cell; 
There  needs  no  noise  at  all  t'  awaken  sin, 
Th'  adulterer  and  the  thief  his  'larum  has  within.' 

"  And,  if  the  diligence  of  wicked  persons  be  so  much 
to  be  blamed,  as  that  it  is  only  an  emphasis  and  exaggera- 
tion of  their  wickedness,  I  see  not  how  their  courage  can 
avoid  the  same  censure.  If  the  undertaking  bold  and  vast 
and  unreasonable  designs  can  deserve  that  honourable 
name,  I  am  sure  Faux  and  his  fellow  gunpowder  friends 
will  have  cause  to  pretend,  though  not  an  equal,  yet  at 
least  the  next  place  of  honour;  neither  can  I  doubt  but, 
if  they  too  had  succeeded,  they  would  have  found  their 
applauders  and  admirers.  It  was  bold,  unquestionably,  for 
a  man,  in  defiance  of  all  human  and  divine  laws  (and  with 
so  little  probability  of  a  long  impunity),  so  publicly  and  so 
outrageously  to  murder  his  master;  it  was  bold,  with  so 
much  insolence  and  affront,  to  expel  and  disperse  all  the 
chief  partners  of  his  guilt,  and  creators  of  his  power;  it 
was  bold  to  violate,  so  openly  and  so  scornfully,  all  acts 
and  constitutions  of  a  nation,  and  afterward  even  of  his 
own  making;  it  was  bold  to  assume  the  authority  of  call- 
ing, and  bolder  yet  of  breaking,  so  many  Parliaments;  it 
was  bold  to  trample  upon  the  patience  of  his  own,  and 
provoke  that  of  all  neighbouring  countries;  it  was  bold,  I 
say,  above  all  boldnesses,  to  usurp  this  tyranny  to  himself; 
and  impudent  above  all  impudences  to  endeavour  to  trans- 


Ij2  COWLEY 

mit  it  to  his  posterity.  But  all  this  boldness  is  so  far  from 
being  a  sign  of  manly  courage  (which  dares  not  transgress 
the  rules  of  any  other  virtue)  that  it  is  only  a  demonstra- 
tion of  brutish  madness  or  diabolical  possession.  In  both 
which  last  cases  there  use  frequent  examples  to  appear,  of 
such  extraordinary  force  as  may  justly  seem  more  won- 
derful and  astonishing  than  the  actions  of  Cromwell; 
neither^  4t  stranger  to  believe  that  a  whole  nation  should 
not  be  able  tp  govern  him  and  a  mad  army  than  that  five 
or  six  men  shotijd  not  be  strong  enough  to  bind  a  dis- 
tracted girl.  There  is  no  man  ever  succeeds  in  one  wicked- 
ness but  it  gives  him^he  boldness  to  attempt  a  greater. 
It  was  boldly  done  of  Nero  to  kill  his  mother  and  all  the 
chief  nobility  of  the  empire;  it  was... boldly  done  to  set  the 
metropolis  of  the  whole  world  on  fire  and  undauntedly 
play  upon  his  harp  while  he  saw  it  burning;  I  could  reckon 
up  five  hundred  boldnesses  of  that  great  person  (for  why 
should  not  he,  too,  be  called  so?)  who  wanted,  when  he 
was  to  die,  that  courage  which  could  hardly  have  failed 
any  woman  in  the  like  necessity. 

"  It  would  look  (I  must  confess)  like  envy,  or  too  much 
partiality,  if  I  should  say  that  personal  kind  of  courage  had 
been  deficient  in  the  man  we  speak  of;  I  am  confident  it 
was  not;  and  yet  I  may  venture,  I  think,  to  affirm  that 
no  man  ever  bore  the  honour  of  so  many  victories,  at  the 
rate  of  fewer  wounds,  or  dangers  of  his  own  body;  and 
though  his  valour  might  perhaps  have  given  him  a  just 
pretension  to  one  of  the  first  charges  in  an  army,  it  could 
not  certainly  be  a  sufficient  ground  for  a  title  to  the  com- 
mand of  three  nations. 

"  What  then  shall  we  say?  that  he  did  all  this  by  witch- 
craft? He  did  so,  indeed,  in  a  great  measure,  by  a  sin  that 
is  called  like  it  in  the  Scriptures.  But  truly  and  unpas- 
sionately  reflecting  upon  the  advantages  of  his  person, 
which  might  be  thought  to  have  produced  those  of  his  for- 
tune, I  can  espy  no  other  but  extraordinary  diligence  and 
infinite  dissimulation;  and  believe  he  was  exalted  above 
his  nation  partly  by  his  own  faults,  but  chiefly  for  ours. 

"  We  have  brought  him  thus  briefly  (not  through  all 
his  labyrinths)  to  the  supreme  usurped  authority;  and,  be- 
cause you  say  it  was  great  pity  he  did  not  live  to  com- 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL  173 

mand  more  kingdoms,  be  pleased  to  let  me  represent  to 
you,  in  a  few  words,  how  well  I  conceive  he  governed 
these.  And  we  will  divide  the  consideration  into  that  of 
his  foreign  and  domestic  actions.  The  first  of  his  foreign 
was  a  peace  with  our  brethren  of  Holland  (who  were  the 
first  of  our  neighbours  that  God  chastised  for  having  had 
so  great  a  hand  in  the  encouraging  and  abetting  our 
troubles  at  home);  who  would  not  imagine,  at  first  glance, 
that  this  had  been  the  most  virtuous  and  laudable  deed 
that  his  whole  life  could  have  made  any  parade  of?  But 
no  man  can  look  upon  all  the  circumstances  without  per- 
ceiving that  it  was  purely  the  sale  and  sacrificing  of  the 
greatest  advantages  that  this  countrey  could  ever  hope,  and 
was  ready  to  reap,  from  a  foreign  war,  to  the  private  in- 
terests of  his  covetousness  and  ambition,  and  the  security 
3f  his  new  and  unsettled  usurpation.  No  sooner  is  that 
danger  past  but  this  Beatus  Pacificus  is  kindling  a  fire  in 
the  northern  world,  and  carrying  a  war  two  thousand  miles 
off,  westward.  Two  millions  a  year  (besides  all  the  vales  of 
his  protectorship)  is  as  little  capable  to  suffice  now  either 
his  avarice  or  prodigality,  as  the  two  hundred  pounds  were 
that  he  was  born  to.  He  must  have  his  prey  of  the  whole 
Indies,  both  by  sea  and  land,  this  great  alligator.  To  sat- 
isfy our  Anti-Solomon  (who  has  made  silver  almost  as  rare 
as  gold,  and  gold  as  precious  stones  in  his  new  Jerusalem) 
we  must  go,  ten  thousand  of  his  slaves,  to  fetch  him  riches 
from  his  fantastical  Ophir.  And,  because  his  flatterers  brag 
of  him  as  the  most  fortunate  prince  (the  Faustus  as  well 
as  Sylla  of  our  nation,  whom  God  never  forsook  in  any 
of  his  undertakings),  I  desire  them  to  consider  how,  since 
the  English  name  was  ever  heard  of,  it  never  received  so 
great  and  so  infamous  a  blow  as  under  the  imprudent 
conduct  of  this  unlucky  Faustus;  and,  herein,  let  me  ad- 
mire the  justice  of  God,  in  this  circumstance,  that  they, 
who  had  enslaved  their  countrey  (though  a  great  army, 
which  I  wish,  may  be  observed  by  ours  with  trembling), 
should  be  so  shamefully  defeated  by  the  hands  of  forty 
slaves.  It  was  very  ridiculous  to  see  how  prettily  they 
endeavoured  to  hide  this  ignominy  under  the  great  name 
of  the  conquest  of  Jamaica;  as  if  a  defeated  army  should 
have  the  impudence  to  brag  afterward  of  the  victory,  be- 

12 


i;4  COWLEY 

cause,  though  they  had  fled  out  of  the  field  of  battle,  yet 
they  quartered  that  night  in  a  village  of  the  enemies.  The 
war  with  Spain  was  a  necessary  consequence  of  this  folly, 
and  how  much  we  have  gotten  by  it  let  the  custom-house 
and  exchange  inform  you;  and  if  he  please  to  boast  of 
the  taking  a  part  of  the  silver  fleet  (which,  indeed,  nobody 
else  but  he  who  was  the  sole  gainer  has  cause  to  do),  at 
least,  let  him  give  leave  to  the  rest  of  the  nation  (which 
is  the  only  loser)  to  complain  of  the  loss  of  twelve  hundred 
of  her  ships. 

"  But  because  it  may  here,  perhaps,  be  answered,  that 
his  successes  nearer  home  have  extinguished  the  disgrace 
of  so  remote  miscarriages,  and  that  Dunkirk  ought  more 
to  be  remembered  for  his  glory  than  St.  Domingo  for  his 
disadvantage,  I  must  confess,  as  to  the  honour  of  the  Eng- 
lish courage,  that  they  were  not  wanting  upon  that  occa- 
sion (excepting  only  the  fault  of  serving  at  least  indirectly 
against  their  master)  to  the  upholding  of  the  renown  of 
their  warlike  ancestors.  But  for  his  particular  share  of  it, 
who  sate  still  at  home,  and  exposed  them  so  frankly 
abroad,  I  can  only  say  that,  for  less  money  than  he  in  the 
short  time  of  his  reign  exacted  from  his  fellow-subjects, 
some  of  our  former  princes  (with  the  daily  hazard  of  their 
own  persons)  have  added  to  the  dominion  of  England 
not  only  one  town,  but  even  a  greater  kingdom  than  itself. 
And,  this  being  all  considerable  as  concerning  his  enter- 
prises abroad,  let  us  examine,  in  the  next  place,  how  much 
we  owe  him  for  his  justice  and  good  government  at  home. 

"  And  first  he  found  the  commonwealth  (as  they  then 
called  it)  in  a  ready  stock  of  about  eight  hundred  thou- 
sand pounds;  he  left  the  commonwealth  (as  he  had  the 
impudent  raillery  still  to  call  it)  some  two  millions  and  a 
half  in  debt.  He  found  our  trade  very  much  decayed, 
indeed,  in  comparison  of  the  golden  times  of  our  late 
princes;  he  left  it  as  much  again  more  decayed  than  he 
found  it;  and  yet,  not  only  no  prince  in  England,  but 
no  tyrant  in  the  world,  ever  sought  out  more  base  or  infa- 
mous means  to  raise  moneys.  I  shall  only  instance  in  one 
that  he  put  in  practice,  and  another  that  he  attempted,  but 
was  frighted  from  the  execution  (even  he)  by  the  infamy 
of  it.  That  which  he  put  in  practice  was  decimation,12 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL 


175 


which  was  the  most  impudent  breach  of  all  public  faith 
that  the  whole  nation  had  given,  and  all  private  capitula- 
tions which  himself  had  made,  as  the  nation's  general  and 
servant,  that  can  be  found  out  (I  believe)  in  all  history, 
from  any  of  the  most  barbarous  generals  of  the  most  bar- 
barous people.  Which,  because  it  has  been  most  excel- 
lently, and  most  largely,  laid  open  by  a  whole  book13 
written  upon  that  subject,  I  shall  only  desire  you  here  to 
remember  the  thing  in  general,  and  to  be  pleased  to  look 
upon  that  author,  when  you  would  recollect  all  the  par- 
ticulars and  circumstances  of  the  iniquity.  The  other  de- 
sign, of  raising  a  present  sum  of  money,  which  he  violently 
pursued,  but  durst  not  put  in  execution,  was  by  the  call- 
ing in  and  establishment  of  the  Jews  at  London,  from 
which  he  was  rebutted  by  the  universal  outcry  of  the 
divines,  and  e^  en  of  the  citizens  too,  who  took  it  ill,  that 
a  considerable  number,  at  least  among  themselves,  were 
not  thought  Jews  enough  by  their  own  Herod.  And  for 
this  design,  they  say,  he  invented  (O  Antichrist!  Howjpbv 
and  6  TLovrjpbs !)  to  sell  St.  Paul's  to  them  for  a  synagogue, 
if  their  purses  and  devotions  could  have  reached  to  the 
purchase.  And  this,  indeed,  if  he  had  done  only  to  reward 
that  nation  which  had  given  the  first  noble  example  of 
crucifying  their  king,  it  might  have  had  some  appearance 
of  gratitude;  but  he  did  it  only  for  love  of  their  mammon, 
and  would  have  sold  afterward,  for  as  much  more,  St. 
Peter's  (even  at  his  own  Westminster)  to  the  Turks  for  a 
mosquito.  Such  was  his  extraordinary  piety  to  God  that 
he  desired  he  might  be  worshipped  in  all  manners,  ex- 
cepting only  that  heathenish  way  of  the  (  Common  Prayer- 
Book.'  But  what  do  I  speak  of  his  wicked  inventions  for 
getting  money;  when  every  penny,  that  for  almost  five 
years  he  took  every  day  from  every  man  living  in  Eng- 
land, Scotland,  and  Ireland,  was  as  much  robbery  as  if  it 
had  been  taken  by  a  thief  upon  the  highways?  Was  it  not 
so?  or  can  any  man  think  that  Cromwell,  with  the  assist- 
ance of  his  forces  and  moss-troopers,  had  more  right  to 
the  command  of  all  men's  purses  than  he  might  have  had 
to  any  one's  whom  he  had  met,  and  been  too  strong  for, 
on  a  road?  And  yet,  when  this  came,  in  the  case  of  Mr. 
Coney,14  to  be  disputed  by  a  legal  trial,  he  (which  was  the 


COWLEY 

highest  act  of  tyranny  that  ever  was  seen  in  England)  not 
only  discouraged  and  threatened,  but  violently  imprisoned 
the  counsel  of  the  plaintiff;  that  is,  he  shut  up  the  law 
itself  close  prisoner,  that  no  man  might  have  relief  from 
or  access  to  it.  And  it  ought  to  be  remembered  that  this 
was  done  by  those  men  who  a  few  years  before  had  so 
bitterly  decried  and  openly  opposed  the  king's  regular  and 
formal  way  of  proceeding  in  the  trial  of  a  little  ship-money. 
"  But,  though  we  lost  the  benefit  of  our  old  courts  of 
justice,  it  can  not  be  denied  that  he  set  up  new  ones;  and 
such  they  were!  that  as  no  virtuous  prince  before  would, 
so  no  ill  one  durst,  erect.  What,  have  we  lived  so  many 
hundred  years  under  such  a  form  of  justice  as  has  been 
able  regularly  to  punish  all  men  that  offended  against  it; 
and  is  it  so  deficient,  just  now,  that  we  must  seek  out  new 
ways  how  to  proceed  against  offenders?  The  reason  which 
can  only  be  given  in  nature  for  a  necessity  of  this  is,  be- 
cause those  things  are  now  made  crimes  which  were  never 
esteemed  so  in  former  ages;  and  there  must  needs  be  a 
new  court  set  up  to  punish  that  which  all  the  old  ones 
were  bound  to  protect  and  reward.  But  I  am  so  far  from 
declaiming  (as  you  call  it)  against  these  wickednesses 
(which,  if  I  should  undertake  to  do,  I  should  never  get 
to  the  peroration),  that  you  see  I  only  give  a  hint  of  some 
few,  and  pass  over  the  rest,  as  things  that  are  too  many 
to  be  numbered,  and  must  only  be  weighed  in  gross.  Let 
any  man  show  me  (for,  though  I  pretend  not  to  much  read- 
ing, I  will  defy  him  in  all  history),  let  any  man  show  me 
(I  say)  an  example  of  any  nation  in  the  world  (though 
much  greater  than  ours)  where  there  have,  in  the  space 
of  four  years,  been  made  so  many  prisoners,  only  out  of 
the  endless  jealousies  of  one  tyrant's  guilty  imagination. 
I  grant  you  that  Marius  and  Sylla,  and  the  accursed  trium- 
virate after  them,  put  more  people  to  death;  but  the  rea- 
son, I  think,  partly  was  because  in  those  times,  that  had 
a  mixture  of  some  honour  with  their  madness,  they 
thought  it  a  more  civil  revenge  against  a  Roman  to  take 
away  his  life  than  to  take  away  his  liberty.  But  truly,  in 
the  point  of  murder,  too,  we  have  little  reason  to  think 
that  our  late  tyranny  has  been  deficient  to  the  examples 
that  have  ever  been  set  it  in  other  countries.  Our  judges 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL  177 

and  our  courts  of  justice  have  not  been  idle,  and,  to  omit 
the  whole  reign  of  our  late  king  (till  the  beginning  of  the 
•war),  in  which  no  drop  of  blood  was  ever  drawn  but  from 
two  or  three  ears,  I  think  the  longest  time  of  our  worst 
princes  scarce  saw  many  more  executions  than  the  short 
one  of  our  blest  reformer.  And  we  saw  and  smelt  in  our 
open  streets  (as  I  marked  to  you  at  first)  the  broiling  of 
human  bowels  as  a  burnt-offering  of  a  sweet  savour  to 
our  idol;  but  all  murdering,  and  all  torturing  (though  after 
the  subtilest  invention  of  his  predecessors  of  Sicily),  is 
more  humane  and  more  supportable  than  his  selling  of 
Christians,  Englishmen,  gentlemen;  his  selling  of  them 
(oh,  monstrous!  oh,  incredible!)  to  be  slaves  in  America. 
If  his  whole  life  could  be  reproached  with  no  other  action, 
yet  this  alone  would  weigh  down  all  the  multiplicity  of 
crimes  in  any  cf  our  tyrants;  and  I  dare  only  touch,  with- 
out stopping  or  insisting  upon  so  insolent  and  so  exe- 
crable a  cruelty,  for  fear  of  falling  into  so  violent  (though 
a  just)  passion,  as  would  make  me  exceed  that  temper  and 
moderation  which  I  resolve  to  observe  in  this  discourse 
with  you. 

"  These  are  great  calamities,  but  even  these  are  not  the 
most  insupportable  that  we  have  endured;  for  so  it  is,  that 
the  scorn,  and  mockery,  and  the  insultings  of  an  enemy 
are  more  painful  than  the  deepest  wounds  of  his  serious 
fury.  This  man  was  wanton  and  merry  (unwittily  and  un- 
gracefully merry)  with  our  sufferings:  he  loved  to  say  and 
do  senseless  and  fantastical  things,  only  to  show  his  power 
of  doing  or  saying  anything.  It  would  ill  befit  mine,  or 
any  civil  mouth,  to  repeat  those  words  which  he  spoke  con- 
cerning the  most  sacred  of  our  English  laws,  the  Petition 
of  Right,  and  Magna  Charta.15  To-day  you  should  see 
him  ranting  so  wildly  that  nobody  durst  come  near  him; 
the  morrow,  flinging  of  cushions,  and  playing  at  snow- 
balls with  his  servants.  This  month  he  assembles  a  Parlia- 
ment, and  professes  himself,  with  humble  tears,  to  be  only 
their  servant  and  their  minister;  the  next  month  he  swears 
by  the  living  God  that  he  will  turn  them  out  of  doors, 
and  he  does  so,  in  his  princely  way  of  threatening,  bid- 
ding them  '  Turn  the  buckles  of  their  girdles  behind 
them/  The  representative  of  whole,  nay,  of  three  whole 


COWLEY 

nations,  was,  in  his  esteem,  so  contemptible  a  meeting,  that 
he  thought  the  affronting  and  expelling  of  them  to  be  a 
thing  of  so  little  consequence  as  not  to  deserve  that  he 
should  advise  with  any  mortal  man  about  it.  What  shall 
we  call  this?  boldness  or  brutishness?  rashness  or  frenzy? 
There  is  no  name  can  come  up  to  it;  and  therefore  we 
must  leave  it  without  one.  Now,  a  Parliament  must  be 
chosen  in  the  new  manner,  next  time  in  the  old  form,  but 
all  cashiered  still  after  the  newest  mode.  Now  he  will  gov- 
ern by  major-generals,  now  by  one  House,  now  by  another 
House,  now  by  no  House;  now  the  freak  takes  him,  and 
he  makes  seventy  peers  of  the  land  at  one  clap  (extempore, 
and  stans  pede  in  uno);  and,  to  manifest  the  absolute 
power  of  the  potter,  he  chooses  not  only  the  worst  clay 
he  could  find,  but  picks  up  even  the  dirt  and  mire  to 
form  out  of  it  his  vessels  of  honour.  It  was  said  anciently 
of  Fortune  that,  when  she  had  a  mind  to  be  merry,  and 
to  divert  herself,  she  was  wont  to  raise  up  such  kind  of 
people  to  the  highest  dignities.  This  son  of  Fortune, 
Cromwell  (who  was  himself  one  of  the  primest  of  her  jests), 
found  out  the  true  haut-gout  of  this  pleasure,  and  rejoiced 
in  the  extravagance  of  his  ways,  as  the  fullest  demonstra- 
tion of  his  uncontrollable  sovereignty.  Good  God !  What 
have  we  seen?  and  what  have  we  suffered?  what  do  all 
these  actions  signify?  what  do  they  say  aloud  to  the  whole 
nation,  but  this  (even  as  plainly  as  if  it  were  proclaimed  by 
heralds  through  the  streets  of  London),  *  You  are  slaves 
and  fools,  and  so  I  will  use  you ! ' 

"  These  are,  briefly,  a  part  of  those  merits  which  you 
lament  to  have  wanted  the  reward  of  more  kingdoms,  and 
suppose  that,  if  he  had  lived  longer,  he  might  have  had 
them — which  I  am  so  far  from  concurring  to  that  I  believe 
his  seasonable  dying  to  have  been  a  greater  good  fortune 
to  him  than  all  the  victories  and  prosperities  of  his  life. 
For  he  seemed  evidently  (methinks)  to  be  near  the  end 
of  his  deceitful  glories ;  his  own  army  grew  at  last  as  weary 
of  him  as  the  rest  of  the  people ;  and  I  never  passed  of  late 
before  his  palace  (his,  do  I  call  it?  I  ask  God  and  the  king 
pardon),  but  I  never  passed  of  late  before  Whitehall  with- 
out reading  upon  the  gate  of  it '  Mene  Mene,  Tekel  Uphar- 
sin.'  But  it  pleased  God  to  take  him  from  the  ordinary 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL  179 

courts  of  men,  and  juries  of  his  peers,  to  his  own  high 
court  of  justice,  which  being  more  merciful  than  ours  be- 
low, there  is  a  little  room  yet  left  for  the  hope  of  his 
friends,  if  he  have  any;  though  the  outward  unrepentance 
of  his  death  afford  but  small  materials  for  the  work  of  char- 
ity, especially  if  he  designed  even  then  to  entail  his  own 
injustice  upon  his  children,  and,  by  it,  inextricable  con- 
fusions and  civil  wars  upon  the  nation.  But  here's  at  last 
an  end  of  him.  And  where's  now  the  fruit  of  all  that  blood 
and  calamity,  which  his  ambition  has  cost  the  world? 
Where  is  it?  Why,  his  son  (you  will  say)  has  the  whole 
crop.  I  doubt  he  will  find  it  quickly  blasted.  I  have 
nothing  to  say  against  the  gentleman,  or  any  living  of  his 
family;  on  the  contrary,  I  wish  him  better  fortune  than  to 
have  a  long  and  unquiet  possession  of  his  master's  inherit- 
ance. Whatsoever  I  have  spoken  against  his  father  is  that 
which  I  should  have  thought  (though  decency,  perhaps, 
might  have  hindered  me  from  saying  it)  even  against  mine 
own,  if  I  had  been  so  unhappy,  as  that  mine,  by  the  same 
ways,  should  have  left  me  three  kingdoms." 

Here  I  stopped,  and  my  pretended  protector,  who,  I 
expected,  should  have  been  very  angry,  fell  a-laughing;  it 
seems  at  the  simplicity  of  my  discourse,  for  thus  he  re- 
plied: "  You  seem  to  pretend  extremely  to  the  old  obso- 
lete rules  of  virtue  and  conscience,  which  makes  me  doubt 
very  much  whether,  from  this  vast  prospect  of  three  king- 
doms, you  can  show  me  any  acres  of  your  own.  But  these 
are  so  far  from  making  you  a  prince  that  I  am  afraid  your 
friends  will  never  have  the  contentment  to  see  you  so  much 
as  a  justice  of  peace  in  your  own  country.  For  this,  I 
perceive,  which  you  call  virtue  is  nothing  else  but  either 
the  frowardness  of  a  cynic  or  the  laziness  of  an  epicurean. 
I  am  glad  you  allow  me  at  least  artful  dissimulation,  and 
unwearied  diligence  in  my  hero;  and  I  assure  you  that 
he,  whose  life  is  constantly  drawn  by  those  two,  shall  never 
be  misled  out  of  the  way  of  greatness.  But  I  see  you  are 
a  pedant,  and  Platonical  statesman,  a  theoretical  common- 
wealth's-man,  a  Utopian  dreamer.  Was  ever  riches  got- 
ten by  your  golden  mediocrities?  or  the  supreme  place 
attained  to  by  virtues  that  must  not  stir  out  of  the  middle? 
Do  you  study  Aristotle's  politics,  and  write,  if  you  please, 


COWLEY 

comments  upon  them;  and  let  another  but  practise  Ma- 
chiavel,  and  let  us  see,  then,  which  of  you  two  will  come  to 
the  greatest  preferments.  If  the  desire  of  rule  and  superior- 
ity be  a  virtue  (as  sure  I  am  it  is  more  imprinted  in  human 
nature  than  any  of  your  lethargical  morals) — and  what  is 
the  virtue  of  any  creature  but  the  exercise  of  those  powers 
and  inclinations  which  God  has  infused  into  it? — if  that  (I 
say)  be  virtue,  we  ought  not  to  esteem  anything  vice  which 
is  the  most  proper,  if  not  the  only,  means  of  attaining  of  it: 

"  It  is  a  truth  so  certain,  and  so  clear, 
That  to  the  first-born  man  it  did  appear; 
Did  not  the  mighty  heir,  the  noble  Cain, 
By  the  fresh  laws  of  Nature  taught,  disdain 
That  (though  a  brother)  any  one  should  be 
A  greater  favourite  to  God  than  he? 
He  strook  him  down;  and,  so  (said  he)  so  fell 
The  sheep,  which  thou  didst  sacrifice  so  well. 
Since  all  the  fullest  sheaves,  which  I  could  bring, 
Since  all  were  blasted  in  the  offering, 
Lest  God  should  my  next  victim  too  despise, 
The  acceptable  priest  I'll  sacrifice. 
Hence,  coward  fears;  for  the  first  blood  so  spilt, 
As  a  reward,  he  the  first  city  built. 
'Twas  a  beginning  generous  and  high, 
Fit  for  a  grandchild  of  the  Deity. 
So  well  advanced,  'twas  pity  there  he  stayed; 
One  step  of  glory  more  he  should  have  made, 
And  to  the  utmost  bounds  of  greatness  gone; 
Had  Adam  too  been  killed,  he  might  have  reigned  alone. 
One  brother's  death,  what  do  I  mean  to  name, 
A  small  oblation  to  revenge  and  fame? 
The  mighty-souled  Abimelec,  to  shew 
What  for  a  high  place  a  higher  spirit  can  do, 
A  hecatomb  almost  of  brethren  slew, 
And  seventy  times  in  nearest  blood  he  dyed 
(To  make  it  hold)  his  royal  purple  pride. 
Why  do  I  name  the  lordly  creature  man? 
The  weak,  the  mild,  the  coward  woman,  can, 
When  to  a  crown  she  cuts  her  sacred  way, 
All  that  oppose,  with  manlike  courage,  slay. 
So  Athaliah,  when  she  saw  her  son, 
And  with  his  life  her  dearer  greatness  gone, 
With  a  majestic  fury  slaughtered  all 
Whom  high  birth  might  to  high  pretences  call: 
Since  he  was  dead  who  all  her  power  sustained, 
Resolved  to  reign  alone;  resolved,  and  reigned. 
In  vain  her  sex,  in  vain  the  laws  withstood, 
In  vain  the  sacred  plea  of  David's  blood; 
A  noble,  and  a  bold  contention,  she 
(One  woman)  undertook  with  destiny. 
She  to  pluck  down,  destiny  to  uphold 
(Obliged  by  holy  oracles  of  old) 
The  great  Jessaean  race  on  Juda's  throne; 


GOVERNMENT   OF   OLIVER   CROMWELL  181 

Till  'twas  at  last  an  equal  wager  grown, 

Scarce  fate,  with  much  ado,  the  better  got  by  one. 

Tell  me  not,  she  herself  at  last  was  slain; 

Did  she  not,  first,  seven  years  (a  lifetime)  reign? 

Seven  royal  years  t'  a  public  spirit  will  seem 

More  than  the  private  life  of  a  Methusalem. 

'Tis  godlike  to  be  great;  and,  as  they  say, 

A  thousand  years  to  God  are  but  a  day; 

So  to  a  man,  when  once  a  crown  he  wears, 

The  coronation  day's  more  than  a  thousand  years." 

He  would  have  gone  on,  I  perceived,  in  his  blas- 
phemies but  that,  by  God's  grace,  I  became  so  bold  as 
thus  to  interrupt  him:  "  I  understand  now  perfectly  (which 
I  guessed  at  long  before)  what  kind  of  angel  and  protector 
you  are,  and  though  your  style  in  verse  be  very  much 
mended  since  you  were  wont  to  deliver  oracles,  yet  your 
doctrine  is  much  worse  than  ever  you  had  formerly  (that 
I  heard  of)  the  face  to  publish;  whether  your  long  practice 
with  mankind  has  increased  and  improved  your  malice, 
or  whether  you  think  us  in  this  age  to  be  grown  so  impu- 
dently wicked  that  there  needs  no  more  art  or  disguises  to 
draw  us  to  your  party." 

"  My  dominion,"  said  he  hastily,  and  with  a  dreadful, 
furious  look,  "  is  so  great  in  this  world,  and  I  am  so  power- 
ful a  monarch  of  it,  that  I  need  not  be  ashamed  that  you 
should  know  me;  and  that  you  may  see  I  know  you  too, 
I  know  you  to  be  an  obstinate  and  inveterate  malignant; 
and  for  that  reason  I  shall  take  you  along  with  me  to  the 
next  garrison  of  ours;  from  whence  you  shall  go  to  the 
Tower,  and  from  thence  to  the  court  of  justice,  and  from 
thence  you  know  whither."  I  was  almost  in  the  very 
pounces  of  the  great  bird  of  prey: 

"  When,  lo,  ere  the  last  words  were  fully  spoke, 
From  a  fair  cloud,  which  rather  op'd  than  broke, 
A  flash  of  light,  rather  than  lightening,  came, 
So  swift,  and  yet  so  gentle,  was  the  flame. 
Upon  it  rode  (and,  in  his  full  career, 
Seemed  to  my  eyes  no  sooner  there,  than  here) 
The  comeliest  youth  of  all  th*  angelic  race; 
Lovely  his  shape,  ineffable  his  face. 
The  frowns,  with  which  he  strook  the  trembling  fiend, 
All  smiles  of  human  beauty  did  transcend; 
His  beams  of  locks  fell  part  dishevelled  down, 
Part  upward  curled,  and  formed  a  nat'ral  crown, 
Such  as  the  British  monarchs  used  to  wear; 
If  gold  might  be  compared  with  angel's  hair. 


1 82  COWLEY 

His  coat  and  flowing  mantle  were  so  bright, 

They  seemed  both  made  of  woven  silver  light: 

Across  his  breast  an  azure  ribbon  went, 

At  which  a  medal  hung,  that  did  present 

In  wondrous  living  figures  to  the  sight, 

The  mystic  champion's,  and  old  dragon's  fight; 

And  from  his  mantle's  side  there  shone  afar, 

A  fixed,  and,  I  believe,  a  real  star. 

In  his  fair  hand  (what  need  was  there  of  more?) 

No  arms,  but  th'  English  bloody  cross,  he  bore, 

Which  when  he  toward  th'  affrighted  tyrant  bent, 

And  some  few  words  pronounced  (but  what  they  meant, 

Or  were,  could  not,  alas!  by  me  be  known, 

Only,  I  well  perceived,  Jesus  was  one) 

He  trembled,  and  he  roared,  and  fled  away; 

Mad  to  quit  thus  his  more  than  hoped-for  prey. 

Such  rage  inflames  the  wolf's  wild  heart  and  eyes 
(Robbed,  as  he  thinks,  unjustly  of  his  prize) 
Whom  unawares  the  shepherd  spies,  and  draws 
The  bleating  lamb  from  out  his  ravenous  jaws: 
The  shepherd  fain  himself  would  he  assail, 
But  fear  above  his  hunger  does  prevail, 
He  knows  his  foe  too  strong,  and  must  be  gone: 
He  grins,  as  he  looks  back,  and  howls,  as  he  goes  on." 

NOTES 

1  That  is,  from  a  low  and  plebeian  original. 

I  The  idea  of  this  figure  appears  to  be  taken  from  the  frontispiece 
to  Hobbes's  "  Leviathan." 

*  Meaning  the  Commonwealth. 

4  Hume  has  inserted  this  character  of  Cromwell,  but  altered,  as  he 
says,  in  some  particulars,  from  the  original  in  his  "  History  of  Great 
Britain." 

6  In  virtue  of  which  he  was  bound  to  fight  against  sin,  the  world, 
and  the  devil. 

6  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax. 

T  Cowley  only  means  that  under  the  Protector's  government  some 
persons  suffered  the  customary  death  of  traitors. 

*  This  word,  in  the  sense  of  patria,  or  as  including  in  it  the  idea  of 
a  civil  constitution,  is  always  spelled  by  Cowley  with  an  e  before  the  y — 
countrry;  in  the  sense  of  rus,  without  an  e — country. 

*  Cowley  inserts  "  omnia  "  for  the  "  caetera  "  of  Horace. 
10  Octavius  and  Antony. 

"  It  was  owing  to  a  dream  of  his  physician  that  Octavius  saved  his 
life  (by  quitting  his  tent,  where  he  was  sick,  in  a  critical  moment),  and 
assisted  at  the  battle  of  Philippi,  which  gained  him  the  whole  world. 
Cassius's  death,  and  the  ill  success  at  Philippi,  was  owing  to  a  mistake 
caused  by  his  shortness  of  sight. 

12  Decimation  here  means  not  the  putting  to  death  of  every  tenth 
man,  but  the  levying  of  the  tenth  penny  on  the  estates  of  the  royalists. 

II  This  book  is  probably  that  which  was  written  by  the  king's  com- 
mand at  Cologne,  most  probably  by  Sir  Edward  Hyde.    ("  History  of 
the  Rebellion,"  vol.  iii,  p.  445,  fol.) 

14  See  Clarendon's  "  History,"  vol.  iii,  p.  506,  fol. 
"  In  the  case  of  Coney  before  mentioned. 


OF  REWARDING  GENIUS 
IN  ENGLAND 

BY 

OLIVER   GOLDSMITH 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  was  the  son  of  a  clergyman,  and  was  born  in 
Pallas,  in  the  county  Longford,  Ireland,  November  10,  1728.     His  birth- 

Elace  is  supposed  to  be  the  scene  of  his  "  Deserted  Village,"  and  his 
ither  the  original  of  Dr.  Primrose  in  "  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield."  His 
earliest  schoolmaster  was  Thomas  Byrne,  who  is  described  in  his  most 
famous  poem.  He  was  entered  as  a  sizar,  or  poor  student,  at  Trinity 
College,  Dublin,  in  1744,  got  into  all  sorts  of  scrapes,  and  finally  ran 
away,  but  returned  and  took  his  degree  (at  the  foot  of  his  class)  in  1749. 
He  tried  to  take  clerical  orders,  but  was  rejected  ;  set  out  for  America, 
but  got  no  farther  than  Cork  ;  was  supplied  with  money  to  study  law  in 
London,  but  immediately  lost  it  in  gambling.  He  studied  medicine  in 
Edinburgh  and  Leyden,  then  spent  two  years  wandering  about  the  Con- 
tinent, and  in  1756  returned  to  England.  He  practised  as  a  physician  a 
little  while  in  a  suburb  of  London,  then  became  a  proof  reader,  then 
usher  in  an  academy,  and  then  assistant  editor  of  a  magazine.  After 
that  he  lived  in  London,  and  was  author,  editor,  and  compiler  by  turns, 
with  all  sorts  of  business  and  social  adventures,  till  his  death,  April  4, 
1774.  Dr.  Johnson,  Garrick,  and  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  were  among  his 
intimate  friends.  His  first  published  book  was  a  series  of  essays  under 
the  title,  "An  Enquiry  into  the  Present  State  of  Polite  Learning  in  Eu- 
rope," from  which  the  one  here  given  is  chosen.  This  book  was  pub- 
lished anonymously  in  1759;  an(^  one  °f  tne  ^ast  things  he  did  was  to 
prepare  a  revised  edition,  which  appeared  soon  after  his  death.  His 
Chinese  Letters,"  or  "Citizen  of  the  World,"  form  another  series  of 
essays,  which  appeared  first  in  a  newspaper.  Besides  these,  his  famous 
works  are  his  novel,  "The  Vicar  of  Wakefield"  ;  his  poems,  "The  Trav- 
eller" and  "The  Deserted  Village  ";  and  his  comedies,  "She  Stoops  to 
Conquer"  and  "The  Good-natured  Man."  He  is  supposed  to  have  been 
in  love  with  Mary  Horneck,  who  was  called  the  Jessamy  Bride,  but  he 
never  married — perhaps  because  of  his  improvidence  and  utter  lack  of 
common  sense  in  business  matters,  which  kept  him  forever  bankrupt. 
He  was  two  thousand  pounds  in  debt  when  he  died. 


OF  REWARDING  GENIUS  IN  ENGLAND 

THERE  is  nothing  authors  are  more  apt  to  lament 
than  want  of  encouragement  from  the  age.  What- 
ever their  differences  in  other  respects,  they  are  all 
ready  to  unite  in  this  complaint,  and  each  indirectly  offers 
himself  as  an  instance  of  the  truth  of  his  assertion. 

The  beneficed  divine,  whose  wants  are  only  imaginary, 
expostulates  as  bitterly  as  the  poorest  author.1  Should 
interest  or  good  fortune  advance  the  divine  to  a  bishopric, 
or  the  poor  son  of  Parnassus  into  that  place  which  the 
other  has  resigned,  both  are  authors  no  longer:  the  one 
goes  to  prayers  once  a  day,  kneels  upon  cushions  of  velvet, 
and  thanks  gracious  Heaven  for  having  made  the  circum- 
stances of  all  mankind  so  extremely  happy;  the  other  bat- 
tens on  all  the  delicacies  of  life,  enjoys  his  wife  and  his 
easy-chair,  and  sometimes,  for  the  sake  of  conversation, 
deplores  the  luxury  of  these  degenerate  days. 

All  encouragements  to  merit  are  therefore  misapplied, 
which  make  the  author  too  rich  to  continue  his  profession. 
There  can  be  nothing  more  just  than  the  old  observation, 
that  authors,  like  running  horses,  should  be  fed,  but  not 
fattened.  If  we  would  continue  them  in  our  service  we 
should  reward  them  with  a  little  money  and  a  great  deal 
of  praise,  still  keeping  their  avarice  subservient  to  their 
ambition.  Not  that  I  think  a  writer  incapable  of  filling 
an  employment  with  dignity;  I  would  only  insinuate  that, 
when  made  a  bishop  or  statesman,  he  will  continue  to 
please  us  as  a  writer  no  longer;  as,  to  resume  a  former 
allusion,  the  running  horse,  Vvhen  fattened,  will  still  be  fit 
for  very  useful  purposes,  though  unqualified  for  a  courser. 

No  nation  gives  greater  encouragements  to  learning 
than  we  do;  yet,  at  the  same  time,  none  are  so  injudicious 
in  the  application.  We  seem  to  confer  them  with  the  same 
view  that  statesmen  have  been  known  to  grant  employ- 

18$ 


GOLDSMITH 

ments  at  court,  rather  as  bribes  to  silence  than  incentives 
to  emulation. 

Upon  this  principle  all  our  magnificent  endowments 
of  colleges  are  erroneous;  and,  at  best,  more  frequently 
enrich  the  prudent  than  reward  the  ingenious.  A  lad 
whose  passions  are  not  strong  enough  in  youth  to  mislead 
him  from  that  path  of  science  which  his  tutors,  and  not  his 
inclinations,  have  chalked  out,  by  four  or  five  years  per- 
severance may  probably  obtain  every  advantage  and  hon- 
our his  college  can  bestow.  I  forget  whether  the  simile 
has  been  used  before,  but  I  would  compare  the  man  whose 
youth  has  been  thus  passed  in  the  tranquility  of  dispas- 
sionate prudence  to  liquors  which  never  ferment,  and  con- 
sequently continue  always  muddy.  Passions  may  raise  a 
commotion  in  the  youthful  breast,  but  they  disturb  only 
to  refine  it.  However  this  be,  mean  talents  are  often  re- 
warded in  colleges  with  an  easy  subsistence.  The  candi- 
dates for  preferments  of  this  kind  often  regard  their  ad- 
mission as  a  patent  for  future  indolence;2  so  that  a  life 
begun  in  studious  labour  is  often  continued  in  luxurious 
affluence. 

Among  the  universities  abroad,  I  have  ever  observed 
their  riches  and  their  learning  in  a  reciprocal  proportion, 
their  stupidity  and  pride  increasing  with  their  opulence. 
Happening  once,  in  conversation  with  Gaubius  of  Leyden, 
to  mention  the  college  of  Edinburgh,  he  began  by  com- 
plaining that  all  the  English  students  which  formerly 
came  to  his  university  now  went  entirely  there;  and  the 
fact  surprised  him  more,  as  Leyden  was  now  as  well  as 
ever  furnished  with  masters  excellent  in  their  respective 
professions.  He  concluded  by  asking  if  the  professors  of 
Edinburgh  were  rich?  I  replied  that  the  salary  of  a  pro- 
fessor there  seldom  amounted  to  more  than  thirty  pounds 
a  year.  "  Poor  men,"  says  he,  "  I  heartily  wish  they  were 
better  provided  for;  until  they  become  rich  we  can  have 
no  expectation  of  English  students  at  Leyden." 

Premiums,  also,  proposed  for  literary  excellence,  when 
given  as  encouragements  to  boys,  may  be  useful;  but  when 
designed  as  rewards  to  men  are  certainly  misapplied.  We 
have  seldom  seen  a  performance  of  any  great  merit  in  con- 
sequence of  rewards  proposed  in  this  manner.  Who  has 


OF   REWARDING  GENIUS   IN   ENGLAND  xg; 

ever  observed  a  writer  of  any  eminence  a  candidate  in  so 
precarious  a  contest?  The  man  who  knows  the  real  value 
of  his  own  genius  will  no  more  venture  it  upon  an  un- 
certainty than  he  who  knows  the  true  use  of  a  guinea  will 
stake  it  with  a  sharper.3 

Every  encouragement  given  to  stupidity,  when  known 
to  be  such,  is  also  a  negative  insult  upon  genius.  This 
appears  in  nothing  more  evident  than  the  undistinguished 
success  of  those  who  solicit  subscriptions.  When  first 
brought  into  fashion,  subscriptions  were  conferred  upon 
the  ingenious  alone,  or  those  who  were  reputed  such.  But 
at  present  we  see  them  made  a  resource  of  indigence,  and 
requested,  not  as  rewards  of  merit,  but  as  a  relief  of  dis- 
tress. If  tradesmen  happen  to  want  skill  in  conducting 
their  own  business,  yet  they  are  able  to  write  a  book;  if 
mechanics  vant  money,  or  ladies  shame,  they  write  books 
and  solicit  subscriptions.  Scarce  a  morning  passes  that 
proposals  of  this  nature  are  not  thrust  into  the  half-open- 
ing doors  of  the  rich,  with  perhaps  a  paltry  petition,  show- 
ing the  author's  wants  but  not  his  merits.  I  would  not 
willingly  prevent  that  pity  which  is  due  to  indigence,  but 
while  the  streams  of  liberality  are  thus  diffused,  they  must, 
in  the  end,  become  proportionably  shallow. 

What,  then,  are  the  proper  encouragements  of  genius? 
I  answer,  subsistence  and  respect;  for  these  are  rewards 
congenial  to  its  nature.  Every  animal  has  an  aliment 
peculiarly  suited  to  its  constitution.  The  heavy  ox  seeks  « 
nourishment  from  earth;  the  light  chameleon  has  been 
supposed  to  exist  on  air;  a  sparer  diet  even  than  this  will 
satisfy  the  man  of  true  genius,  for  he  makes  a  luxurious 
banquet  upon  empty  applause.  It  is  this  alone  which  has 
inspired  all  that  ever  was  truly  great  and  noble  among  us. 
It  is,  as  Cicero  finely  calls  it,  the  echo  of  virtue.  Avarice 
is  the  passion  of  inferior  natures — money  the  pay  of  the 
common  herd.  The  author  who  draws  his  quill  merely  to 
take  a  purse,  no  more  deserves  success  than  he  who  pre- 
sents a  pistol.4 

When  the  link  between  patronage  and  learning  was 
entire,  then  all  who  deserved  fame  were  in  a  capacity  of 
attaining  it.  When  the  great  Somers  was  at  the  helm, 
patronage  was  fashionable  among  our  nobility.  The  mid- 


!88  GOLDSMITH 

die  ranks  of  mankind,  who  generally  imitate  the  great,  then 
followed  their  example,  and  applauded  from  fashion,  if  not 
from  feeling.  I  have  heard  an  old  poet 5  of  that  glorious 
age  say  that  a  dinner  with  his  lordship  has  procured  him 
invitations  for  the  whole  week  following — that  an  airing 
in  his  patron's  chariot  has  supplied  him  with  a  citizen's 
coach  on  every  future  occasion.  For  who  would  not  be 
proud  to  entertain  a  man  who  kept  so  much  good  com- 
pany? 

But  this  link  now  seems  entirely  broken.  Since  the 
days  of  a  certain  prime  minister,  of  inglorious  memory,6 
the  learned  have  been  kept  pretty  much  at  a  distance.  A 
jockey,  or  a  laced  player,  supplies  the  place  of  the  scholar, 
poet,  or  the  man  of  virtue.  Those  conversations,  once 
the  result  of  wisdom,  wit,  and  innocence,  are  now  turned 
to  humbler  topics,  little  more  being  expected  from  a  com- 
panion than  a  laced  coat,  a  pliant  bow,  and  an  immoderate 
friendship  for a  well-served  table. 

Wit,  when  neglected  by  the  great,  is  generally  despised 
by  the  vulgar.  Those  who  are  unacquainted  with  the 
world  are  apt  to  fancy  the  man  of  .wit  as  leading  a  very 
agreeable  life.  They  conclude,  perhaps,  that  he  is  attended 
to  with  silent  admiration,  and  dictates  to  the  rest  of  man- 
kind with  all  the  eloquence  of  conscious  superiority.  Very 
different  is  his  present  situation.  He  is  called  an  author, 
and  all  know  that  an  author  is  a  thing  only  to  be  laughed 
at.  His  person,  not  his  jest,  becomes  the  mirth  of  the 
company.  At  his  approach  the  most  fat,  unthinking  face 
brightens  into  malicious  meaning.  Even  aldermen  laugh, 
and  revenge  on  him  the  ridicule  which  was  lavished  on 
their  forefathers: 

"  Etiam  victis  redit  in  praecordia  virtus, 
Victoresque  cadunt." 

It  is  indeed  a  reflection  somewhat  mortifying  to  the 
author  who  breaks  his  ranks  and  singles  out  for  public 
favour  to  think  that  he  must  combat  contempt  before  he 
can  arrive  at  glory;  that  he  must  expect  to  have  all  the 
fools  of  society  united  against  him  before  he  can  hope 
for  the  applause  of  the  judicious.  For  this,  however,  he 
must  prepare  beforehand;  as  those  who  have  no  idea  of 


OF   REWARDING  GENIUS   IN   ENGLAND  189 

the  difficulty  of  his  employment,  will  be  apt  to  regard  his 
inactivity  as  idleness — and,  not  having  a  notion  of  the 
pangs  of  uncomplying  thought  in  themselves,  it  is  not  to 
be  expected  they  should  have  any  desire  of  rewarding  it 
in  others. 

Voltaire  has  finely  described  the  hardships  a  man  must 
encounter  who  writes  for  the  public.  I  need  make  no 
apology  for  the  length  of  the  quotation: 

"  Your  fate,  my  dear  Le  Fevre,  is  too  strongly  marked 
to  permit  your  retiring.  The  bee  must  toil  in  making 
honey,  the  silk-worm  must  spin,  the  philosopher  must  dis- 
sect them,  and  you  are  born  to  sing  of  their  labours.  You 
must  be  a  poet  and  a  scholar,  even  though  your  inclina- 
tions should  resist:  Nature  is  too  strong  for  inclination. 
But  hope  not,  my  friend,  to  find  tranquility  in  the  employ- 
ment you  a.e  going  to  pursue.  The  route  of  genius  is 
not  less  obstructed  with  disappointment  than  that  of  am- 
bition. 

"  If  you  have  the  misfortune  not  to  excel  in  your  pro- 
fession as  a  poet,  repentance  must  tincture  all  your  future 
enjoyments;  if  you  succeed,  you  make  enemies.  You 
tread  a  narrow  path:  contempt  on  one  side,  and  hatred 
on  the  other,  are  ready  to  seize  you  upon  the  slightest 
deviation. 

"  But  why  must  I  be  hated?  you  will  perhaps  reply; 
why  must  I  be  persecuted  for  having  written  a  pleasing 
poem,  for  having  produced  an  applauded  tragedy,  or  for 
otherwise  instructing  or  amusing  mankind  or  myself? 

"  My  dear  friend,  these  very  successes  shall  render  you 
miserable  for  life.  Let  me  suppose  your  performance  has 
merit — let  me  suppose  you  have  surmounted  the  teasing 
employments  of  printing  and  publishing;  how  will  you 
be  able  to  lull  the  critics  who,  like  Cerberus,  are  posted  at 
all  the  avenues  of  literature,  and  who  settle  the  merits  of 
every  new  performance?  How,  I  say,  will  you  be  able  to 
make  them  open  in  your  favour?  There  are  always  three 
or  four  literary  journals  in  France,  as  many  in  Holland, 
each  supporting  opposite  interests.  The  booksellers  who 
guide  these  periodical  compilations,  find  their  account  in 
being  severe;  the  authors  employed  by  them  have  wretch- 
edness to  add  to  their  natural  malignity.  The  majority 


190 


GOLDSMITH 


may  be  in  your  favour,  but  you  may  depend  on  being  torn 
by  the  rest.  Loaded  with  unmerited  scurrility,  perhaps 
you  reply;  they  rejoin;  both  plead  at  the  bar  of  the  public, 
and  both  are  condemned  to  ridicule. 

"  But  if  you  write  for  the  stage  your  case  is  still  more 
worthy  compassion.  You  are  there  to  be  judged  by  men 
whom  the  custom  of  the  times  has  rendered  contemptible. 
Irritated  by  their  own  inferiority,  they  exert  all  their  little 
tyranny  upon  you,  revenging  upon  the  author  the  insults 
they  receive  from  the  public.  From  such  men,  then,  you 
are  to  expect  your  sentence.  Suppose  your  piece  admitted, 
acted;  one  single  ill-natured  jest  from  the  pit  is  sufficient 
to  cancel  all  your  labours.  But  allowing  that  it  succeeds, 
there  are  a  hundred  squibs  flying  all  abroad  to  prove  that 
it  should  not  have  succeeded.  You  shall  find  your  bright- 
est scenes  burlesqued  by  the  ignorant;  and  the  learned, 
who  know  a  little  Greek,  and  nothing  of  their  native  lan- 
guage, affect  to  despise  you. 

"  But,  perhaps,  with  a  panting  heart  you  carry  your 
piece  before  a  woman  of  quality.  She  gives  the  labours 
of  your  brain  to  her  maid  to  be  cut  into  shreds  for  curl- 
ing her  hair;  while  the  laced  footman,  who  carries  the 
gaudy  livery  of  luxury,  insults  your  appearance,  who  bear 
the  livery  of  indigence. 

"  But  granting  your  excellence  has  at  last  forced  envy 
to  confess  that  your  works  have  some  merit;  this,  then,  is 
all  the  reward  you  can  expect  while  living.  However,  for 
this  tribute  of  applause  you  must  expect  persecution.  You 
will  be  reputed  the  author  of  scandal  which  you  have  never 
seen,  of  verses  you  despise,  and  of  sentiments  directly  con- 
trary to  your  own.  In  short,  you  must  embark  in  some 
one  party,  or  all  parties  will  be  against  you. 

"  There  are  among  us  a  number  of  learned  societies 
where  a  lady  presides,  whose  wit  begins  to  twinkle  when 
the  splendour  of  her  beauty  begins  to  decline.  One  or 
two  men  of  learning  compose  her  ministers  of  state.  These 
must  be  flattered,  or  made  enemies  by  being  neglected. 
Thus,  though  you  had  the  merit  of  all  antiquity  united  in 
your  person,  you  grow  old  in  misery  and  disgrace.  Every 
place  designed  for  men  of  letters  is  filled  up  by  men  of 
intrigue.  Some  nobleman's  private  tutor,  some  court  flat- 


OF   REWARDING  GENIUS   IN   ENGLAND  191 

terer,  shall  bear  away  the  prize,  and  leave  you  to  anguish 
and  to  disappointment."  7 

Yet  it  were  well  if  none  but  the  dunces  of  society  were 
combined  to  render  the  profession  of  an  author  ridiculous 
or  unhappy.  Men  of  the  first  eminence  are  often  found 
to  indulge  this  illiberal  vein  of  raillery.  Two  contending 
writers  often,  by  the  opposition  of  their  wit,  render  their 
profession  contemptible  in  the  eyes  of  ignorants,8  who 
should  have  been  taught  to  admire.  And  yet,  whatever 
the  reader  may  think  of  himself,  it  is  at  least  two  to  one 
but  he  is  a  greater  blockhead  than  the  most  scribbling 
dunce  he  affects  to  despise. 

The  poet's  poverty  is  a  standing  topic  of  contempt. 
His  writing  for  bread  is  an  unpardonable  offence.  Per- 
haps of  all  mankind  an  author  in  these  times  is  used  most 
hardly.  We  keep  him  poor,  and  yet  revile  his  poverty. 
Like  angry  parents  who  correct  their  children  till  they 
cry,  and  then  correct  them  for  crying,  we  reproach  him 
for  living  by  his  wit,  and  yet  allow  him  no  other  means 
to  live. 

His  taking  refuge  in  garrets  and  cellars9  has  of  late 
.been  violently  objected  to  him,  and  that  by  men  who,  I 
dare  hope,  are  more  apt  to  pity  than  insult  his  distress.10 
Is  poverty  the  writer's  fault?  No  doubt  he  knows  how 
to  prefer  a  bottle  of  champagne  to  the  nectar  of  the  neigh- 
bouring alehouse,  or  a  venison  pasty  to  a  plate  of  potatoes. 
Want  of  delicacy  is  not  in  him,  but  in  us,  who  deny  him 
the  opportunity  of  making  an  elegant  choice. 

Wit  certainly  is  the  property  of  those  who  have  it,  nor 
should  we  be  displeased  if  it  is  the  only  property  a  man 
sometimes  has.  We  must  not  underrate  him  who  uses  it 
for  subsistence,  and  flies  from  the  ingratitude  of  the  age 
even  to  a  bookseller  for  redress.  If  the  profession  of  an 
author  is  to  be  laughed  at  by  stupids,  it  is  better  sure  to 
be  contemptibly  rich  than  contemptibly  poor.  For  all  the 
wit  that  ever  adorned  the  human  mind  will,  at  present,  no 
more  shield  the  author's  poverty  from  ridicule  than  his 
high-topped  gloves  conceal  the  unavoidable  omissions  of 

his  laundress. 

To  be  more  serious:  new  fashions,  follies,  and  vices 
make  new  monitors  necessary  in  every  age.  An  author 


I92 


GOLDSMITH 


may  be  considered  as  a  merciful  substitute  to  the  legis- 
lature. He  acts,  not  by  punishing  crimes,  but  prevent- 
ing them.  However  virtuous  the  present  age,  there  may 
be  still  growing  employment  for  ridicule  or  reproof,  for 
persuasion  or  satire.  If  the  author  be  therefore  still  so 
necessary  among  us,  let  us  treat  him  with  proper  con- 
sideration, as  a  child  of  the  public,  not  a  rent-charge  on  the 
community.  And,  indeed,  a  child  of  the  public  he  is  in  all 
respects;  for  while  so  well  able  to  direct  others,  how  in- 
capable is  he  frequently  found  of  guiding  himself!  His 
simplicity  exposes  him  to  all  the  insidious  approaches  of 
cunning;  his  sensibility  to  the  slightest  invasions  of  con- 
tempt. Though  possessed  of  fortitude  to  stand  unmoved 
the  expected  bursts  of  an  earthquake,  yet  of  feelings  so 
exquisitely  poignant  as  to  agonize  under  the  slightest  dis- 
appointment. Broken  rest,  tasteless  meals,  and  causeless 
anxiety  shorten  his  life,  or  render  it  unfit  for  active  employ- 
ment; prolonged  vigils  and  intense  application  still  further 
contract  his  span,  and  make  his  time  glide  insensibly  away. 
Let  us  not,  then,  aggravate  those  natural  inconveniences 
by  neglect;  we  have  had  sufficient  instances  of  this  kind 
already.  Sale  and  Moore n  will  suffice  for  one  age  at 
least.  But  they  are  dead,  and  their  sorrows  are  over.  The 
neglected  author  of  the  "  Persian  Eclogues/'  which,  how- 
ever inaccurate,  excel  any  in  our  language,  is  still  alive; 
happy,  if  insensible  of  our  neglect,  not  raging  at  our  in- 
gratitude.12 It  is  enough  that  the  age  has  already  pro- 
duced instances  of  men  pressing  foremost  in  the  lists  of 
fame,  and  worthy  of  better  times,  schooled  by  continued 
adversity  into  a  hatred  of  their  kind,  flying  from  thought 
to  drunkenness,  yielding  to  the  united  pressure  of  labour, 
penury,  and  sorrow,  sinking  unheeded,  without  one  friend 
to  drop  a  tear  on  their  unattended  obsequies,  and  indebted 
to  charity  for  a  grave.13 

The  author,  when  unpatronized  by  the  great,  has  natu- 
rally recourse  to  the  bookseller.  There  can  not  be,  per- 
haps, imagined  a  combination  more  prejudicial  to  taste 
than  this.  It  is  the  interest  of  the  one  to  allow  as  little 
for  writing,  and  of  the  other  to  write  as  much,  as  possible. 
Accordingly,  tedious  compilations  and  periodical  maga- 
zines are  the  result  of  their  joint  endeavours.  In  these  cir- 


OF   REWARDING  GENIUS   IN  ENGLAND  193 

cumstances  the  author  bids  adieu  to  fame,  writes  for  bread, 
and  for  that  only  imagination  is  seldom  called  in.  He  sits 
down  to  address  the  venal  Muse  with  the  most  phlegmatic 
apathy,  and  as  we  are  told  of  the  Russian,  courts  his  mis- 
tress by  falling  asleep  in  her  lap.  His  reputation  never 
spreads  in  a  wider  circle  than  that  of  the  trade,  who  gen- 
erally value  him,  not  for  the  fineness  of  his  compositions, 
but  the  quantity  he  works  off  in  a  given  time. 

A  long  habit  of  writing  for  bread  thus  turns  the  ambi- 
tion of  every  author  at  last  into  avarice.  He  finds  that  he 
has  written  many  years,  that  the  public  are  scarcely  ac- 
quainted even  with  his  name;  he  despairs  of  applause,  and 
turns  to  profit  which  invites  him.  He  finds  that  money 
procures  all  those  advantages,  that  respect,  and  that  ease, 
which  he  vainly  expected  from  fame.  Thus  the  man  who, 
under  the  protection  of  the  great,  might  have  done  honour 
to  humanity  when  only  patronized  by  the  bookseller,  be- 
comes a  thing  little  superior  to  the  fellow  who  works  at 
the  press.14 

NOTES 

1 "  That  ever  snuffed  his  candle  with  finger  and  thumb."     (First 

edition.) 

"  Laziness."    (First  edition.) 

1  The  first  edition  adds,  "  by  throwing  a  main."    (Editor.) 
4  Kenrick,   Goldsmith's   successor  on  the   "  Monthly   Review,"   in 

reviewing  this  work  made  a  gross  personal  attack  upon  the  author. 

•  Dr.  Young.    (Percy.) 

•  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  no  doubt,  as  Cunningham  and  Forster  say. 

T  From  Voltaire's  letter,  "  A.  M.  Le  Fevre,  sur  Les  inconvenients 
attaches  a  la  Litterature,"  1732. 

•  Percy's  edition  has  "  ignorant  persons."    (Editor.) 

•  The  first  edition  has  also  "  and  living  among  vermin    ;  which  re- 
calls the  picture  of  our  author  in  Green  Arbour  Court,  when  he  wrote 
on  the  "  Sagacity  of  Some  Insects,"  and  when,  indeed,  he  wrote  the 
principal  part  of  the  present  work. 

10  Perhaps  in  allusion  more  particularly  to  Pope  s  continual  ridi- 
cule of  poor  poets. 

u  The  first  edition  had  "  Sale,  Savage,  Amhurst,  More. 

u  Our  author  here  alludes  to  the  insanity  of  Collins.    (Percy.) 

"  "  Among  the  dregs  of  mankind."    (First  edition.) 

14 "  Sint  Maecenates,  non  deerunt,  Flacce,  Marones."    (First  edition.) 


COMMON    SENSE 


AND 


THE    CRISIS 

BY 

THOMAS   PAINE 


THOMAS  PAINE — English  by  birth,  American  by  adoption,  French  in 
many  of  his  ideas  and  part  of  his  life — was  a  native  of  Thetford,  Nor- 
folk, where  he  was  born,  January  29,  1737.  His  father  was  a  Quaker. 
Thomas  engaged  in  several  business  enterprises,  apparently  with  little 
success,  and  in  1774  sailed  for  Philadelphia,  bringing  letters  of  intro- 
duction from  Franklin.  He  was  made  editor  of  the  "  Pennsylvania 
Magazine,"  and  his  writings  soon  attracted  attention.  In  his  "Serious 
Thoughts,"  published  in  1775,  he  expressed  his  belief  that  the  American 
colonies  would  become  independent,  and  a  hope  that  slavery  would  be 
abolished.  The  idea  of  independence  was  specially  urged  in  a  separate 
pamphlet  entitled  "Common  Sense,"  which  had  a  wide  circulation.  It 
was  not  copyrighted,  and  he  received  nothing  from  the  sale  ;  but  the 
Legislature  gave  him  five  hundred  pounds.  When  independence  was 
declared  he  enlisted  in  the  army,  and  afterward  he  was  on  the  staff  of  Gen- 
eral Greene.  In  December,  1776,  he  published  "The  Crisis,"  the  essay 
that  is  presented  here.  By  order  of  the  commander  it  was  read  at  the 
head  of  every  regiment,  and  it  did  a  great  deal  to  strengthen  the  courage  of 
the  people  in  their  efforts  for  independence.  Seventeen  other  chapters,  on 
the  same  subject,  appeared  at  irregular  intervals  during  six  years.  Paine 
was  for  a  time  secretary  of  a  congressional  committee,  and  then  Clerk  of 
the  Pennsylvania  General  Assembly.  When,  in  1780,  Washington  wrote 
to  that  body  that  the  distress  of  the  army  was  likely  to  result  in  mutiny, 
Paine  started  a  relief  subscription  with  five  hundred  dollars,  his  salary, 
and  the  roll  was  soon  increased  by  patriotic  citizens  to  an  amount  that 
averted  the  danger.  The  next  year  Paine  went  to  Europe  and  secured 
large  loans.  In  1785  Congress  voted  him  three  thousand  dollars  as  a 
testimonial,  and  the  Legislature  of  New  York  gave  him  a  confiscated 
estate  in  New  Rochelle.  Two  years  later  he  went  to  France,  and  then  to 
England,  where  he  set  up  a  remarkable  iron  bridge  of  his  own  invention. 
In  i79i-'92  he  published  his  "  Rights  of  Man,"  as  a  reply  to  Burke's  essay 
on  the  French  Revolution.  This  was  translated  into  French  and  had 
a  wide  circulation,  and  it  was  followed  by  his  election  to  a  seat  in  the 
French  National  Convention.  The  book  also  caused  his  indictment  in 
England  for  sedition.  As  he  did  not  appear  for  trial,  he  was  outlawed. 
In  the  Convention  he  voted  with  the  Girondists.  He  favoured  the  trial  of 
Louis  XVI,  but  wanted  him  banished  to  America  instead  of  executed. 
Robespierre  imprisoned  him  as  a  foreigner,  and  on  the  way  to  prison  he 
gave  Joel  Barlow  his  "Age  of  Reason."  When  this  was  published, 
Paine  s  political  opponents  seized  the  opportunity  to  bring  him  into  dis- 
repute by  representing  it  as  grossly  atheistical.  This  it  is  not,  as  it 
expresses  belief  in  God  and  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  but  it  is  deis- 
tical.  James  Monroe,  then  American  Minister  in  Paris,  procured  his 
liberation  after  the  death  of  Robespierre.  He  published  several  other 
pamphlets,  returned  to  the  United  States  in  1802,  and  died  in  New  York 
city,  June  8,  1809. 


COMMON  SENSE 


SOME  writers  have  so  confounded  society  with  gov- 
ernment as  to  leave  little  or  no  distinction  between 
them;  whereas  they  are  not  only  different,  but  have 
different  origins.     Society  is  produced  by  our  wants,  and 
government  by  our  wickedness;  the  former  promotes  our 
happiness  positively  by  uniting  our  affections,  the  latter 
negatively  by  restraining  our  vices.    The  one  encourages 
intercourse,  the  other  creates  distinctions.     The  first  is  a 
patron,  the  last  is  a  punisher. 

Society  in  every  state  is  a  blessing,  but  government, 
even  in  its  frest  state,  is  but  a  necessary  evil;  in  its  worst 
state  an  intolerable  one,  for  when  we  suffer  or  are  exposed 
to  the  same  miseries  by  a  government  which  we  might  ex- 
pect in  a  country  without  government,  our  calamity  is 
heightened  by  reflecting  that  we  furnish  the  means  by 
which  we  suffer.  Government,  like  dress,  is  the  badge 
of  lost  innocence;  the  palaces  of  kings  are  built  upon  the 
ruins  of  the  bowers  of  paradise.  For  were  the  impulses  of 
conscience  clear,  uniform,  and  irresistibly  obeyed,  man 
would  need  no  other  lawgiver;  but  that  not  being  the  case, 
he  finds  it  necessary  to  surrender  up  a  part  of  his  property 
to  furnish  means  for  the  protection  of  the  rest;  and  this 
he  is  induced  to  do  by  the  same  prudence  which  in  every 
other  case  advises  him  out  of  two  evils  to  choose  the  least. 
Wherefore,  security  being  the  true  design  and  end  of 
government,  it  unanswerably  follows  that  whatever  form 
thereof  appears  most  likely  to  insure  it  to  us  with  the 
least  expense  and  greatest  benefit  is  preferable  to  all  others. 
In  order  to  gain  a  clear  and  just  idea  of  the  design  and 
end  of  government,  let  us  suppose  a  small  number  of  per- 
sons settled  in  some  sequestered  part  of  the  earth,  uncoa- 
13  *97 


198  PAINE 

nected  with  the  rest,  they  will  then  represent  the  first 
peopling  of  any  country,  or  of  the  world.  In  this  state  of 
natural  liberty,  society  will  be  their  first  thought.  A  thou- 
sand motives  will  excite  them  thereto;  the  strength  of  one 
man  is  so  unequal  to  his  wants,  and  his  mind  so  unfitted 
for  perpetual  solitude,  that  he  is  soon  obliged  to  seek 
assistance  and  relief  of  another,  who  in  his  turn  requires 
the  same.  Four  or  five  united  would  be  able  to  raise  a 
tolerable  dwelling  in  the  midst  of  a  wilderness,  but  one 
man  might  labour  out  the  common  period  of  life  without 
accomplishing  anything;  when  he  had  felled  his  timber 
he  could  not  remove  it,  nor  erect  it  after  it  was  removed; 
hunger  in  the  meantime  would  urge  him  from  his  work, 
and  every  different  want  would  call  him  a  different  way. 
Disease,  nay,  even  misfortune,  would  be  death,  for  though 
neither  might  be  mortal,  yet  either  would  disable  him 
from  living,  and  reduce  him  to  a  state  in  which  he  might 
rather  be  said  to  perish  than  to  die. 

Thus  necessity,  like  a  gravitating  power,  would  soon 
form  our  newly  arrived  emigrants  into  society,  the  recip- 
rocal blessings  of  which  would  supersede,  and  render  the 
obligations  of  law  and  government  unnecessary  while  they 
remained  perfectly  just  to  each  other;  but  as  nothing  but 
heaven  is  impregnable  to  vice,  it  will  unavoidably  happen 
that  in  proportion  as  they  surmount  the  first  difficulties 
of  emigration,  which  bound  them  together  in  a  common 
cause,  they  will  begin  to  relax  in  their  duty  and  attach- 
ment to  each  other;  and  this  remissness  will  point  out  the 
necessity  of  establishing  some  form  of  government  to  sup- 
ply the  defect  of  moral  virtue. 

Some  convenient  tree  will  afford  them  a  state-house, 
under  the  branches  of  which  the  whole  colony  may  assem- 
ble to  deliberate  on  public  matters.  It  is  more  than  prob- 
able that  their  first  laws  will  have  the  title  only  of  Regu- 
lations, and  be  enforced  by  no  other  penalty  than  public 
disesteem.  In  this  first  parliament  every  man  by  natural 
right  will  have  a  seat. 

But  as  the  colony  increases,  the  public  concerns  will  in- 
crease likewise,  and  the  distance  at  which  the  members 
may  be  separated  will  render  it  too  inconvenient  for  all 
of  them  to  meet  on  every  occasion  as  at  first,  when  their 


COMMON   SENSE 

number  was  small,  their  habitations  near,  and  the  public 
concerns  few  and  trifling.  This  will  point  out  the  con- 
venience of  their  consenting  to  leave  the  legislative  part 
to  be  managed  by  a  select  number  chosen  from  the  whole 
body,  who  are  supposed  to  have  the  same  concerns  at  stake 
which  those  have  who  appointed  them,  and  who  will  act 
in  the  same  manner  as  the  whole  body  would  were  they 
present.  If  the  colony  continue  increasing,  it  will  become 
necessary  to  augment  the  number  of  representatives,  and 
that  the  interest  of  every  part  of  the  colony  may  be 
attended  to,  it  will  be  found  best  to  divide  the  whole  into 
convenient  parts,  each  part  sending  its  proper  number; 
and  that  the  elected  might  never  form  to  themselves  an 
interest  separate  from  the  electors,  prudence  will  point  out 
the  propriety  of  having  elections  often,  because  as  the 
elected  might  by  that  means  return  and  mix  again  with 
the  general  body  of  the  electors,  in  a  few  months  their 
fidelity  to  the  public  will  be  secured  by  the  prudent  re- 
flection of  not  making  a  rod  for  themselves.  And  as  this 
frequent  interchange  will  establish  a  common  interest  with 
every  part  of  the  community,  they  will  mutually  and  natu- 
rally support  each  other,  and  on  this  (not  on  the  unmean- 
ing name  of  king)  depends  the  strength  of  government 
and  the  happiness  of  the  governed. 

Here,  then,  is  the  origin  and  rise  of  government — 
namely,  a  mode  rendered  necessary  by  the  inability  of 
moral  virtue  to  govern  the  world;  here  too  is  the  design 
and  end  of  government,  viz.,  freedom  and  security.  And 
however  our  eyes  may  be  dazzled  with  show,  or  our  ears 
deceived  by  sound,  however  prejudice  may  warp  our  wills, 
or  interest  darken  our  understanding,  the  simple  voice  of 
Nature  and  reason  will  say  it  is  right. 

I  draw  my  idea  of  the  form  of  government  from  a  prin- 
ciple in  Nature,  which  no  art  can  overturn — viz.,  that  the 
more  simple  anything  is  the  less  liable  it  is  to  be  disor- 
dered, and  the  easier  repaired  when  disordered — and  with 
this  maxim  in  view  I  offer  a  few  remarks  on  the  so-much- 
boasted  constitution  of  England.  That  it  was  noble  for 
the  dark  and  slavish  times  in  which  it  was  erected  is 
granted.  When  the  world  was  overrun  with  tyranny,  the 
least  remove  therefrom  was  a  glorious  rescue.  But  that 


200  PAINE 

it  is  imperfect,  subject  to  convulsions,  and  incapable  of 
producing  what  it  seems  to  promise,  is  easily  demon- 
strated. 

Absolute  governments  (though  the  disgrace  of  human 
nature)  have  this  advantage  with  them  that  they  are  sim- 
ple; if  the  people  suffer,  they  know  the  head  from  which 
their  suffering  springs,  know  likewise  the  remedy,  and 
are  not  bewildered  by  a  variety  of  causes  and  cures.  But 
the  constitution  of  England  is  so  exceedingly  complex  that 
the  nation  may  suffer  for  years  together  without  being 
able  to  discover  in  which  part  the  fault  lies;  some  will  say 
in  one  and  some  in  another,  and  every  political  physician 
will  advise  a  different  medicine. 

I  know  it  is  difficult  to  get  over  local  or  long-standing 
prejudices,  yet  if  we  will  suffer  ourselves  to  examine  the 
component  parts  of  the  English  constitution  we  shall  find 
them  to  be  the  base  remains  of  two  ancient  tyrannies,  com- 
pounded with  some  new  republican  materials: 

1.  The  remains  of  monarchical  tyranny  in  the  person 
of  the  king. 

2.  The  remains  of  aristocratical  tyranny  in  the  persons 
of  the  Peers. 

3.  The  new  republican  materials,   in  the  persons  of 
the  Commons,  on  whose  virtue  depends  the  freedom  of 
England. 

The  first  two,  by  being  hereditary,  are  independent  of 
the  people;  wherefore  in  a  constitutional  sense  they  con- 
tribute nothing  toward  the  freedom  of  the  state. 

To  say  that  the  constitution  of  England  is  a  union  of 
three  powers,  reciprocally  checking  each  other,  is  farcical; 
either  the  words  have  no  meaning  or  they  are  flat  contra- 
dictions. 

To  say  that  the  Commons  is  a  check  upon  the  king 
presupposes  two  things: 

1.  That  the  king  is  not  to  be  trusted  without  being 
looked  after,  or,  in  other  words,  that  a  thirst  for  absolute 
power  is  the  natural  disease  of  monarchy. 

2.  That  the  Commons,  by  being  appointed  for  that 
purpose,  are  either  wiser  or  more  worthy  of  confidence 
than  the  crown. 

But  as  the  same  constitution  which  gives  the  Com- 


COMMON   SENSE  2OI 

mons  a  power  to  check  the  king  by  withholding  the  sup- 
plies, gives  afterward  the  king  a  power  to  check  the  Com- 
mons, by  empowering  him  to  reject  their  other  bills,  it 
again  supposes  that  the  king  is  wiser  than  those  whom  it 
has  already  supposed  to  be  wiser  than  him.  A  mere  ab- 
surdity! 

There  is  something  exceedingly  ridiculous  in  the  com- 
position of  monarchy:  it  first  excludes  a  man  from  the 
means  of  information,  yet  empowers  him  to  act  in  cases 
where  the  highest  judgment  is  required.  The  state  of  a 
king  shuts  him  from  the  world,  yet  the  business  of  a  king 
requires  him  to  know  it  thoroughly;  wherefore  the  differ- 
ent parts,  by  unnaturally  opposing  and  destroying  each 
other,  prove  the  whole  character  to  be  absurd  and  useless. 

Some  writers  have  explained  the  English  constitution 
thus:  the  kLig,  say  they,  is  one,  the  people  another;  the 
Peers  are  a  house  in  behalf  of  the  king,  the  Commons  in 
behalf  of  the  people.  But  this  hath  all  the  distinctions  of 
a  house  divided  against  itself;  and  though  the  expressions 
be  pleasantly  arranged,  yet  when  examined  they  appear 
idle  and  ambiguous;  and  it  will  always  happen  that  the 
nicest  construction  that  words  are  capable  of,  when  applied 
to  the  description  of  something  which  either  can  not  exist, 
or  is  too  incomprehensible  to  be  within  the  compass  of 
description,  will  be  words  of  sound  only,  and  though  they 
may  amuse  the  ear  they  can  not  inform  the  mind;  for  this 
explanation  includes  a  previous  question — viz. :  How  came 
the  king  by  a  power  which  the  people  are  afraid  to  trust, 
and  always  obliged  to  check?  Such  a  power  could  not  be 
the  gift  of  a  wise  people,  neither  can  any  power  which 
needs  checking  be  from  God;  yet  the  provision  which  the 
constitution  makes  supposes  such  a  power  to  exist. 

But  the  provision  is  unequal  to  the  task;  the  means 
either  can  not  or  will  not  accomplish  the  end,  and  the 
whole  affair  is  a  felo  de  se;  for  as  the  greater  weight  will 
always  carry  up  the  less,  and  as  all  the  wheels  of  a  machine 
are  put  in  motion  by  one,  it  only  remains  to  know  which 
power  in  the  constitution  has  the  most  weight,  for  that 
will  govern ;  and  though  the  others,  or  a  part  of  them,  may 
clog,  or,  as  the  phrase  is,  check  the  rapidity  of  its  motion, 
yet  so  long  as  they  can  not  stop  it  their  endeavours  will 


202  PAINE 

be  ineffectual;  the  first  moving  power  will  at  last  have  its 
way,  and  what  it  wants  in  speed  is  supplied  by  time. 

That  the  crown  is  this  overbearing  part  in  the  English 
constitution  needs  not  be  mentioned,  and  that  it  derives  its 
whole  consequence  merely  from  being  the  giver  of  places 
and  pensions  is  self-evident,  wherefore,  though  we  have 
been  wise  enough  to  shut  and  lock  a  door  against  abso- 
lute monarchy,  we  at  the  same  time  have  been  foolish 
enough  to  put  the  crown  in  possession  of  the  key. 

The  prejudice  of  Englishmen  in  favour  of  their  own 
government,  by  kings,  lords,  and  commons,  arises  as 
much  or  more  from  national  pride  than  reason.  Indi- 
viduals are  undoubtedly  safer  in  England  than  in  some 
other  countries,  but  the  will  of  the  king  is  as  much  the  law 
of  the  land  in  Britain  as  in  France,  with  this  difference, 
that  instead  of  proceeding  directly  from  his  mouth,  it  is 
handed  to  the  people  under  the  formidable  shape  of  an 
act  of  Parliament.  For  the  fate  of  Charles  I  hath  only 
made  kings  more  subtle,  not  more  just. 

Wherefore,  laying  aside  all  national  pride  and  preju- 
dice in  favour  of  modes  and  forms,  the  plain  truth  is  that 
it  is  wholly  owing  to  the  constitution  of  the  people,  and 
not  the  constitution  of  the  government,  that  the  crown  is 
not  as  oppressive  in  England  as  in  Turkey. 

An  inquiry  into  the  constitutional  errors  in  the  English 
form  of  government  is  at  this  time  highly  necessary;  for 
as  we  are  never  in  a  proper  condition  of  doing  justice  to 
others  while  we  continue  under  the  influence  of  some  lead- 
ing partiality,  so  neither  are  we  capable  of  doing  it  to 
ourselves  while  we  remain  fettered  by  any  obstinate  preju- 
dice. And  as  a  man  who  is  attached  to  a  prostitute  is 
unfitted  to  choose  or  judge  of  a  wife,  so  any  prepossession 
in  favour  of  a  rotten  constitution  of  government  will  dis- 
able us  from  discerning  a  good  one. 


II 

Mankind  being  originally  equals  in  the  order  of  crea- 
tion, the  equality  could  only  be  destroyed  by  some  sub- 
sequent circumstance;  the  distinctions  of  rich  and  poor 
may  in  a  great  measure  be  accounted  for,  and  that  without 


COMMON   SENSE  203 

having  recourse  to  the  harsh  ill-sounding  names  of  avarice 
and  oppression.  Oppression  is  often  the  consequence,  but 
seldom  or  never  the  means  of  riches;  and  though  avarice 
will  preserve  a  man  from  being  necessitously  poor,  it  gen- 
erally makes  him  too  timorous  to  be  wealthy. 

But  there  is  another  and  greater  distinction  for  which 
no  truly  natural  or  religious  reason  can  be  assigned,  and 
that  is  the  distinction  of  men  into  kings  and  subjects. 
Male  and  female  are  the  distinctions  of  Nature;  good  and 
bad,  the  distinctions  of  heaven;  but  how  a  race  of  men 
came  into  the  world  so  exalted  above  the  rest,  and  distin- 
guished like  some  new  species,  is  worth  inquiring  into,  and 
whether  they  are  the  means  of  happiness  or  of  misery  to 
mankind. 

In  the  early  ages  of  the  world,  according  to  the  Scrip- 
ture chronology,  there  were  no  kings;  the  consequence  of 
which  was. there  were  no  wars;  it  is  the  pride  of  kings 
which  throws  mankind  into  confusion.  Holland,  without 
a  king,  hath  enjoyed  more  peace  for  the  last  century  than 
any  of  the  monarchical  governments  of  Europe.  Antiquity 
favours  the  same  remark,  for  the  quiet  and  rural  lives  of 
the  first  patriarchs  have  a  happy  something  in  them  which 
vanishes  when  we  come  to  the  history  of  Jewish  royalty. 

Government  by  kings  was  first  introduced  into  the 
world  by  heathen,  from  whom  the  children  of  Israel 
copied  the  custom.  It  was  the  most  prosperous  invention 
that  was  ever  set  on  foot  for  the  promotion  of  idolatry. 
The  heathen  paid  divine  honours  to  their  deceased  kings, 
and  the  Christian  world  hath  improved  on  the  plan  by 
doing  the  same  to  their  living  ones.  How  impious  is  the 
title  of  sacred  majesty  applied  to  a  worm,  who  in  the 
midst  of  his  splendour  is  crumbling  into  dust! 

As  the  exalting  one  man  so  greatly  above  the  rest  can 
not  be  justified  on  the  equal  rights  of  Nature,  so  neither 
can  it  be  defended  on  the  authority  of  Scripture;  for  the 
will  of  the  Almighty,  as  declared  by  Gideon  and  the 
prophet  Samuel,  expressly  disapproves  of  government  by 
kings.  All  antimonarchical  parts  of  Scripture  have  been 
very  smoothly  glossed  over  in  monarchical  governments, 
but  they  undoubtedly  merit  the  attention  of  countries 
which  have  their  governments  yet  to  form.  "  Render  unto 


204  PAINE 

Caesar  the  things  which  are  Caesar's  "  is  the  Scripture  doc- 
trine of  courts,  yet  it  is  no  support  of  monarchical  gov- 
ernment, for  the  Jews  at  that  time  were  without  a  king, 
and  in  a  state  of  vassalage  to  the  Romans. 

Near  three  thousand  years  passed  away  from  the  Mo- 
saic account  of  the  creation,  until  the  Jews,  under  a  national 
delusion,  requested  a  king.  Till  then  their  form  of  gov- 
ernment (except  in  extraordinary  cases,  where  the  Al- 
mighty interposed)  was  a  kind  of  republic,  administered 
by  a  judge  and  the  elders  of  the  tribes.  Kings  they  had 
none,  and  it  was  held  sinful  to  acknowledge  any  being 
under  that  title  but  the  Lord  of  Hosts.  And  when  a  man 
seriously  reflects  on  the  idolatrous  homage  which  is  paid 
to  the  persons  of  kings,  he  need  not  wonder  that  the  Al- 
mighty, ever  jealous  of  his  honour,  should  disapprove  a 
form  of  government  which  so  impiously  invades  the  pre- 
rogative of  Heaven. 

Monarchy  is  ranked  in  Scripture  as  one  of  the  sins  of 
the  Jews,  for  which  a  curse  in  reserve  is  denounced  against 
them.  The  history  of  that  transaction  is  worth  attend- 
ing to. 

The  children  of  Israel  being  oppressed  by  the  Midian- 
ites,  Gideon  marched  against  them  with  a  small  army,  and 
victory,  through  the  divine  interposition,  decided  in  his 
favour.  The  Jews,  elate  with  success,  and  attributing  it 
to  the  generalship  of  Gideon,  proposed  making  him  a  king, 
saying,  "  Rule  thou  over  us,  thou  and  thy  son,  and  thy 
son's  son."  Here  was  temptation  in  its  fullest  extent;  not 
a  kingdom  only,  but  a  hereditary  one;  but  Gideon  in  the 
piety  of  his  soul  replied:  "  I  will  not  rule  over  you,  neither 
shall  my  son  rule  over  you;  the  Lord  shall  rule  over  you." 
Words  need  not  be  more  explicit;  Gideon  doth  not  decline 
the  honour,  but  denieth  their  right  to  give  it;  neither  doth 
he  compliment  them  with  invented  declarations  of  his 
thanks,  but  in  the  positive  style  of  a  prophet  charges  them 
with  disaffection  to  their  proper  sovereign,  the  King  of 
Heaven. 

About  one  hundred  years  after  this  they  fell  again  into 
the  same  error.  The  hankering  which  the  Jews  had  for 
the  idolatrous  customs  of  the  heathens  is  something  ex- 
ceedingly unaccountable;  but  so  it  was,  that  laying  hold 


COMMON   SENSE  205 

of  the  misconduct  of  Samuel's  two  sons,  who  were  in- 
trusted with  some  secular  concerns,  they  came  in  an  abrupt 
and  clamorous  manner  to  Samuel,  saying,  "  Behold,  thou 
art  old,  and  thy  sons  walk  not  in  thy  ways,  now  make 
us  a  king  to  judge  us  like  all  the  other  nations."  And  here 
we  can  not  but  observe  that  their  motives  were  bad,  viz., 
that  they  might  be  like  unto  other  nations — i.  e.,  the 
heathen — whereas  their  true  glory  lay  in  being  as  much 
unlike  them  as  possible.  "  But  the  thing  displeased  Samuel 
when  they  said,  Give  us  a  king  to  judge  us;  and  Samuel 
prayed  unto  the  Lord,  and  the  Lord  said  unto  Samuel: 
Hearken  unto  the  voice  of  the  people  in  all  that  they  say 
unto  thee,  for  they  have  not  rejected  thee,  but  they  have 
rejected  me,  that  I  should  not  reign  over  them.  Accord- 
ing to  all  the  works  which  they  have  done  since  the  day 
that  I  brought  them  up  out  of  Egypt,  even  unto  this  day; 
wherewith  they  have  forsaken  me,  and  served  other  Gods; 
so  do  they  also  unto  thee.  Now  therefore  hearken  unto 
their  voice,  howbeit,  protest  solemnly  unto  them  and  show 
them  the  manner  of  the  king  that  shall  reign  over  them  " — 
i.  e.,  not  of  any  particular  king,  but  the  general  manner  of 
the  kings  of  the  earth,  whom  Israel  was  so  eagerly  copying 
after.  And  notwithstanding  the  great  distance  of  time  and 
difference  of  manners,  the  character  is  still  in  fashion. 
"  And  Samuel  told  all  the  words  of  the  Lord  unto  the 
people,  that  asked  of  him  a  king.  And  he  said,  This  shall 
be  the  manner  of  the  king  that  shall  reign  over  you;  he 
will  take  your  sons  and  appoint  them  for  himself,  for  his 
chariots,  and  to  be  his  horsemen,  and  some  shall  run  be- 
fore his  chariots  "  (this  description  agrees  with  the  present 
mode  of  impressing  men)>  "  and  he  will  appoint  him  cap- 
tains over  thousands,  and  captains  over  fifties,  and  will  set 
them  to  ear  his  ground  and  to  reap  his  harvest,  and  to 
make  his  instruments  of  war,  and  instruments  of  his 
chariots;  and  he  will  take  your  daughters  to  be  confec- 
tionaries,  and  to  be  cooks  and  to  be  bakers  "  (this  de- 
scribes the  expense  and  luxury  as  well  as  the  oppression 
of  kings),  "and  he  will  take  your  fields  and  your  olive  yards, 
even  the  best  of  them,  and  give  them  to  his  servants;  and 
he  will  take  the  tenth  of  your  seed,  and  of  your  vineyards, 
and  give  them  to  his  officers  and  to  his  servants"  (by 
14 


206  PAINE 

which  we  see  that  bribery,  corruption,  and  favouritism  are 
the  standing  vices  of  kings);  "and  he  will  take  the  tenth 
of  your  men  servants,  and  your  maid  servants,  and  your 
goodliest  young  men,  and  your  asses,  and  put  them  to  his 
work;  and  he  will  take  the  tenth  of  your  sheep,  and  ye  shall 
be  his  servants,  and  ye  shall  cry  out  in  that  day  because  of 
your  king  which  ye  shall  have  chosen.  And  the  Lord  will 
not  hear  you  in  that  day."  This  accounts  for  the  continua- 
tion of  monarchy;  neither  do  the  characters  of  the  few 
good  kings  which  have  lived  since  either  sanctify  the  title 
or  blot  out  the  sinfulness  of  the  origin:  the  high  encomium 
given  of  David  takes  no  notice  of  him  officially  as  a  king, 
but  only  as  a  man  after  God's  own  heart.  "  Nevertheless 
the  people  refused  to  obey  the  voice  of  Samuel,  and  they 
said,  Nay,  but  we  will  have  a  king  over  us,  that  we  may 
be  like  all  the  nations,  and  that  our  king  may  judge  us, 
and  go  out  before  us  and  fight  our  battles."  Samuel  con- 
tinued to  reason  with  them,  but  to  no  purpose;  he  set  be- 
fore them  their  ingratitude,  but  all  would  not  avail;  and 
seeing  them  fully  bent  on  their  folly,  he  cried  out,  "  I  will 
call  unto  the  Lord,  and  he  shall  send  thunder  and  rain  " 
(which  was  then  a  punishment,  being  in  the  time  of  wheat 
harvest),  "  that  ye  may  perceive  and  see  that  your  wicked- 
ness is  great  which  ye  have  done  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord, 
in  asking  you  a  king.  So  Samuel  called  unto  the  Lord, 
and  the  Lord  sent  thunder  and  rain  that  day,  and  all  the 
people  greatly  feared  "the  Lord  and  Samuel.  And  all  the 
people  said  unto  Samuel,  Pray  for  thy  servants  unto  the 
Lord  thy  God  that  we  die  not,  for  we  have  added  unto  our 
sins  this  evil,  to  ask  a  king."  These  portions  of  Scripture 
are  direct  and  positive.  They  admit  of  no  equivocal  con- 
struction. That  the  Almighty  hath  here  entered  his  pro- 
test against  monarchical  government  is  true,  or  the  Scrip- 
ture is  false.  And  a  man  hath  good  reason  to  believe  that 
there  is  as  much  of  kingcraft  as  priestcraft  in  withholding 
the  Scripture  from  the  public  in  Popish  countries.  For 
monarchy  in  every  instance  is  the  Popery  of  government. 

To  the  evil  of  monarchy  we  have  added  that  of  heredi- 
tary succession;  and  as  the  first  is  a  degradation  and  less- 
ening of  ourselves,  so  the  second,  claimed  as  a  matter  of 
right,  is  an  insult  and  imposition  on  posterity.  For  all  men 


COMMON   SENSE  2O/ 

being  originally  equals,  no  one  by  birth  could  have  a  right 
to  set  up  his  own  family  in  perpetual  preference  to  all 
others  forever,  and  though  himself  might  deserve  some 
decent  degree  of  honours  of  his  contemporaries,  yet  his 
descendants  might  be  far  too  unworthy  to  inherit  them. 
One  of  the  strongest  natural  proofs  of  the  folly  of  heredi- 
tary right  in  kings  is  that  Nature  disapproves  it,  otherwise 
she  would  not  so  frequently  turn  it  into  ridicule  by  giving 
mankind  an  ass  for  a  lion. 

Secondly,  as  no  man  at  first  could  possess  more  public 
honours  than  were  bestowed  upon  him,  so  the  givers  of 
those  honours  could  have  no  power  to  give  away  the  right 
of  posterity;  and  though  they  might  say,  "  We  choose  you 
for  our  head,"  they  could  not,  without  manifest  injustice 
to  their  children,  say  that  "  your  children  and  your  chil- 
dren's children  shall  reign  over  ours  forever."  Because 
such  an  unwise,  unjust,  unnatural  compact  might  (perhaps) 
in  the  next  succession  put  them  under  the  government  of 
a  rogue  or  a  fool.  Most  wise  men,  in  their  private  senti- 
ments, have  ever  treated  hereditary  right  with  contempt; 
yet  it  is  one  of  those  evils  which  when  once  established  is 
not  easily  removed;  many  submit  from  fear,  others  from 
superstition,  and  the  more  powerful  part  shares,  with  the 
king,  the  plunder  of  the  rest. 

This  is  supposing  the  present  race  of  kings  in  the  world 
to  have  had  an  honourable  origin;  whereas  it  is  more  than 
probable  that,  could  we  take  off  the  dark  covering  of  an- 
tiquity, and  trace  them  to  their  first  rise,  we  should  find 
the  first  of  them  nothing  better  than  the  principal  ruffian 
of  some  restless  gang,  whose  savage  manners  or  pre-emi- 
nence in  subtlety  obtained  him  the  title  of  chief  among 
plunderers;  and  who  by  increasing  in  power,  and  extend- 
ing his  depredations,  overawed  the  quiet  and  defenceless 
to  purchase  their  safety  by  frequent  contributions.  Yet 
his  electors  could  have  no  idea  of  giving  hereditary  right 
to  his  descendants,  because  such  a  perpetual  exclusion  of 
themselves  was  incompatible  with  the  free  and  unrestrained 
principles  they  professed  to  live  by.  Wherefore,  heredi- 
tary succession  in  the  early  ages  of  monarchy  could  not 
take  place  as  a  matter  of  claim,  but  as  something  casual 
or  complimental;  but  as  few  or  no  records  were  extant 


208  PAINE 

in  those  days,  and  traditionary  history  stuffed  with  fables, 
it  was  very  easy,  after  the  lapse  of  a  few  generations,  to 
trump  up  some  superstitious  tale,  conveniently  timed  Mo- 
hammedlike,  to  cram  hereditary  rights  down  the  throats  of 
the  vulgar.  Perhaps  the  disorders  which  threatened,  or 
seemed  to  threaten,  on  the  decease  of  a  leader  and  the 
choice  of  a  new  one  (for  elections  among  ruffians  could  not 
be  very  orderly)  induced  many  at  first  to  favour  hereditary 
pretensions;  by  which  means  it  happened,  as  it  hath  hap- 
pened since,  that  what  at  first  was  submitted  to  as  a  con- 
venience was  afterward  claimed  as  a  right. 

England,  since  the  conquest,  hath  known  some  few 
good  monarchs,  but  groaned  beneath  a  much  larger  num- 
ber of  bad  ones;  yet  no  man  in  his  senses  can  say  that  their 
claim  under  William  the  Conqueror  is  a  very  honourable 
one.  A  French  bastard  landing  with  an  armed  banditti, 
and  establishing  himself  King  of  England  against  the  con- 
sent of  the  natives,  is  in  plain  terms  a  very  paltry  rascally 
original.  It  certainly  hath  no  divinity  in  it.  However,  it 
is  needless  to  spend  much  time  in  exposing  the  folly  of 
hereditary  right;  if  there  are  any  so  weak  as  to  believe  it, 
let  them  promiscuously  worship  the  ass  and  the  lion,  and 
welcome.  I  shall  neither  copy  their  humility  nor  disturb 
their  devotion. 

Yet  I  should  be  glad  to  ask  how  they  suppose  kings 
came  at  first?  The  question  admits  but  of  three  answers — 
viz.,  either  by  lot,  by  election,  or  by  usurpation.  If  the 
first  king  was  taken  by  lot,  it  establishes  a  precedent  for 
the  next,  which  excludes  hereditary  succession.  Saul  was 
by  lot,  yet  the  succession  was  not  hereditary,  neither 
does  it  appear  from  that  transaction  that  there  was  any 
intention  it  ever  should  be.  If  the  first  king  of  any 
country  was  by  election,  that  likewise  establishes  a  pre- 
cedent for  the  next;  for  to  say  that  the  right  of  all  fu- 
ture generations  is  taken  away  by  the  act  of  the  first 
electors,  in  their  choice  not  only  of  a  king,  but  of  a  family 
of  kings  forever,  hath  no  parallel  in  or  out  of  Scripture 
but  the  doctrine  of  original  sin,  which  supposes  the  free 
will  of  all  men  lost  in  Adam;  and  from  such  compari- 
son, and  it  will  admit  of  no  other,  hereditary  succession 
can  derive  no  glory.  For  as  in  Adam  all  sinned,  and  as 


COMMON   SENSE  20Q 

in  the  first  electors  all  men  obeyed;  as  in  the  one  all  man- 
kind were  subjected  to  Satan,  and  in  the  other  to  sover- 
eignty; as  our  innocence  was  lost  in  the  first,  and  our 
authority  in  the  last;  and  as  both  disable  us  from  reassum- 
ing  some  former  state  and  privilege,  it  unanswerably  fol- 
lows that  original  sin  and  hereditary  succession  are  paral- 
lels. Dishonourable  rank!  Inglorious  connection!  Yet 
the  most  subtle  sophist  can  not  produce  a  juster  simile. 

As  to  usurpation,  no  man  will  be  so  hardy  as  to  defend 
it,  and  that  William  the  Conqueror  was  a  usurper  is  a  fact 
not  to  be  contradicted.  The  plain  truth  is  that  the  an- 
tiquity of  English  monarchy  will  not  bear  looking  into. 

But  it  is  not  so  much  the  absurdity  as  the  evil  of  heredi- 
tary succession  which  concerns  mankind.  Did  it  insure 
a  race  of  good  and  wise  men,  it  would  have  the  seal  of 
divine  authority,  but  as  it  opens  a  door  to  the  foolish,  the 
wicked,  an$  the  improper,  it  hath  in  it  the  nature  of  op- 
pression. Men  who  look  upon  themselves  born  to  reign, 
and  others  to  obey,  soon  grow  insolent;  selected  from  the 
rest  of  mankind,  their  minds  are  early  poisoned  by  im- 
portance; and  the  world  they  act  in  differs  so  materially 
from  the  world  at  large  that  they  have  but  little  opportu- 
nity of  knowing  its  true  interests,  and  when  they  succeed 
to  the  government  are  frequently  the  most  ignorant  and 
unfit  of  any  throughout  the  dominions. 

Another  evil  which  attends  hereditary  succession  is 
that  the  throne  is  subject  to  be  possessed  by  a  minor  at  any 
age;  all  which  time  the  regency  acting  under  the  cover  of 
a  king  have  every  opportunity  and  inducement  to  betray 
their  trust.  The  same  national  misfortune  happens  when 
a  king,  worn  out  with  age  and  infirmity,  enters  the  last 
stage  of  human  weakness.  In  both  these  cases  the  public 
becomes  the  prey  to  every  miscreant  who  can  tamper  suc- 
cessfully with  the  follies  either  of  age  or  infancy. 

The  most  plausible  plea  which  hath  ever  been  offered 
in  favour  of  hereditary  succession  is  that  it  preserves  a 
nation  from  civil  wars;  and  were  this  true  it  would  be 
weighty,  whereas  it  is  the  most  barefaced  falsity  ever  im- 
posed upon  mankind.  The  whole  history  of  England  dis- 
owns the  fact.  Thirty  kings  and  two  minors  have  reigned 
in  that  distracted  kingdom  since  the  conquest,  in  which 


PAINE 

time  there  have  been  (including  the  Revolution)  no  less 
than  eight  civil  wars  and  nineteen  rebellions.  Wherefore, 
instead  of  making  for  peace,  it  makes  against  it,  and  de- 
stroys the  very  foundation  it  seems  to  stand  upon. 

The  contest  for  monarchy  and  succession  between  the 
houses  of  York  and  Lancaster  laid  England  in  a  scene  of 
blood  for  many  years.  Twelve  pitched  battles,  besides 
skirmishes  and  sieges,  were  fought  between  Henry  and 
Edward;  twice  was  Henry  prisoner  to  Edward,  who  in  his 
turn  was  prisoner  to  Henry.  And  so  uncertain  is  the  fate 
of  war  and  the  temper  of  a  nation,  when  nothing  but  per- 
sonal matters  are  the  ground  of  a  quarrel,  that  Henry  was 
taken  in  triumph  from  a  prison  to  a  palace,  and  Edward 
obliged  to  fly  from  a  palace  to  a  foreign  land;  yet,  as  sud- 
den transitions  of  temper  are  seldom  lasting,  Henry  in  his 
turn  was  driven  from  the  throne,  and  Edward  recalled  to 
succeed  him,N  the  Parliament  always  following  the  strong- 
est side. 

This  contest  began  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VI,  and 
was  not  entirely  extinguished  till  Henry  VII,  in  whom 
the  families  were  united — including  a  period  of  sixty- 
seven  years — viz.,  from  1422  to  1489. 

In  short,  monarchy  and  succession  have  laid  (not  this 
or  that  kingdom  only)  but  the  world  in  blood  and  ashes. 
'Tis  a  form  of  government  which  the  word  of  God  bears 
testimony  against,  and  blood  will  attend  it. 

If  we  inquire  into  the  business  of  a  king  we  shall  find 
(and  in  some  countries  they  have  none)  that  after  saunter- 
ing away  their  lives  without  pleasure  to  themselves  or  ad- 
vantage to  the  nation,  they  withdraw  from  the  scene,  and 
leave  their  successors  to  tread  the  same  useless  and  idle 
round.  In  absolute  monarchies  the  whole  weight  of  busi- 
ness, civil  and  military,  lies  on  the  king;  the  children  of 
Israel  in  their  request  for  a  king  urged  this  plea,  "  that  he 
may  judge  us,  and  go  out  before  us  and  fight  our  battles." 
But  in  countries  where  he  is  neither  a  judge  nor  a  general, 
as  in  England,  a  man  would  be  puzzled  to  know  what  is 
his  business. 

The  nearer  any  government  approaches  to  a  republic 
the  less  business  there  is  for  a  king.  It  is  somewhat  dif- 
ficult to  find  a  proper  name  for  the  government  of  Eng- 


COMMON   SENSE  211 

land.  Sir  William  Meredith  calls  it  a  republic;  but  in  its 
present  state  it  is  unworthy  of  the  name,  because  the  cor- 
rupt influence  of  the  crown,  by  having  all  the  places  at  its 
disposal,  hath  so  effectually  swallowed  up  the  power,  and 
eaten  out  the  virtue  of  the  House  of  Commons  (the  repub- 
lican part  in  the  constitution),  that  the  government  of  Eng- 
land is  nearly  as  monarchical  as  that  of  France  or  Spain. 
Men  fall  out  with  names  without  understanding  them;  for 
it  is  the  republican  and  not  the  monarchical  part  of  the 
constitution  of  England  which  Englishmen  glory  in — viz., 
the  liberty  of  choosing  a  House  of  Commons  from  out  of 
their  own  body — and  it  is  easy  to  see  that  when  republican 
virtue  fails,  slavery  ensues.  Why  is  the  constitution  of 
England  sickly  but  because  monarchy  hath  poisoned  the 
republic,  the  crown  hath  engrossed  the  Commons? 

In  England  a  king  hath  little  more  to  do  than  to  make 
war  and  give  away  places;  which,  in  plain  terms,  is  to 
impoverish  the  nation  and  set  it  together  by  the  ears.  A 
pretty  business,  indeed,  for  a  man  to  be  allowed  eight  hun- 
dred thousand  sterling  a  year  for,  and  worshipped  into  the 
bargain!  Of  more  worth  is  one  honest  man  to  society, 
and  in  the  sight  of  God,  than  all  the  crowned  ruffians  that 
ever  lived. 

ill 

In  the  following  pages  I  offer  nothing  more  than  simple 
facts,  plain  arguments,  and  common  sense;  and  have  no 
other  preliminaries  to  settle  with  the  reader  than  that  he 
will  divest  himself  of  prejudice  and  prepossesion,  and  suffer 
his  reason  and  his  feelings  to  determine  for  themselves; 
that  he  will  put  on,  or  rather  that  he  will  not  put  off,  the 
true  character  of  a  man,  and  generously  enlarge  his  views 
beyond  the  present  day. 

Volumes  have  been  written  on  the  subject  of  the  strug- 
gle between  England  and  America.  Men  of  all  ranks  have 
embarked  in  the  controversy,  from  different  motives,  and 
with  various  designs;  but  all  have  been  ineffectual,  and 
the  period  of  debate  is  closed.  Arms,  as  the  last  resource, 
must  decide  the  contest;  the  appeal  was  the  choice  of  the 
king,  and  the  continent  hath  accepted  the  challenge. 

It  has  been  reported  of  the  late  Mr.  Pelham  (who, 


212  PAINE 

though  an  able  minister,  was  not  without  his  faults)  that  on 
his  being  attacked  in  the  House  of  Commons,  on  the  score 
that  his  measures  were  only  of  a  temporary  kind,  replied, 
'  They  will  last  my  time."  Should  a  thought  so  fatal  or 
unmanly  possess  the  colonies  in  the  present  contest,  the 
name  of  ancestors  will  be  remembered  by  future  genera- 
tions with  detestation. 

The  sun  never  shone  on  a  cause  of  greater  worth.  'Tis 
not  the  affair  of  a  city,  a  county,  a  province,  or  a  kingdom, 
but  of  a  continent — of  at  least  one  eighth  part  of  the  habit- 
able globe.  'Tis  not  the  concern  of  a  day,  a  year,  or  an 
age;  posterity  are  virtually  involved  in  the  contest,  and 
will  be  more  or  less  affected,  even  to  the  end  of  time,  by 
the  proceedings  now.  Now  is  the  seed-time  of  continental 
union,  faith,  and  honour.  The  least  fracture  now  will  be 
like  a  name  engraved  with  the  point  of  a  pin  on  the  tender 
rind  of  a  young  oak;  the  wound  will  enlarge  with  the  tree, 
and  posterity  read  it  in  full-grown  characters. 

By  referring  the  matter  from  argument  to  arms,  a  new 
area  for  politics  is  struck;  a  new  method  of  thinking  hath 
arisen.  All  plans,  proposals,  etc.,  prior  to  the  igth  of 
April — i.  e.,  to  the  commencement  of  hostilities — are  like 
the  almanacs  of  last  year;  which,  though  proper  then,  are 
superseded  and  useless  now.  Whatever  was  advanced  by 
the  advocates  on  either  side  of  the  question  then,  termi- 
nated in  one  and  the  same  point,  viz.,  a  union  with  Great 
Britain;  the  only  difference  between  the  parties  was  the 
method  of  effecting  it:  the  one  proposing  force,  the  other 
friendship;  but  it  hath  so  far  happened  that  the  first  has 
failed,  and  the  second  has  withdrawn  her  influence. 

As  much  hath  been  said  of  the  advantages  of  reconcilia- 
tion, which,  like  an  agreeable  dream,  hath  passed  away  and 
left  us  as  we  were,  it  is  but  right  that  we  should  examine 
the  contrary  side  of  the  argument,  and  inquire  into  some  of 
the  many  material  injuries  which  these  colonies  sustain, 
and  always  will  sustain,  by  being  connected  with  and  de- 
pendent on  Great  Britain — to  examine  that  connection  and 
dependence,  on  the  principles  of  Nature  and  common 
sense,  to  see  what  we  have  to  trust  to,  if  separated,  and 
what  we  are  to  expect,  if  dependent. 

I  have  heard  it  asserted  by  some  that  as  America  has 


COMMON   SENSE  213 

flourished  under  her  former  connection  with  Great  Britain, 
the  same  connection  is  necessary  toward  her  future  hap- 
piness, and  will  always  have  the  same  effect.  Nothing 
can  be  more  fallacious  than  this  kind  of  argument.  We 
may  as  well  assert  that  because  a  child  has  thrived  upon 
milk,  it  is  never  to  have  meat,  or  that  the  first  twenty  years 
of  our  lives  is  to  become  a  precedent  for  the  next  twenty. 
But  even  this  is  admitting  more  than  is  true,  for  I  answer 
roundly  that  America  would  have  flourished  as  much,  and 
probably  much  more,  had  no  European  power  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  her.  The  articles  of  commerce  by  which 
she  has  enriched  herself  are  the  necessaries  of  life,  and  will 
always  have  a  market  while  eating  is  the  custom  of  Europe. 

But  she  has  protected  us,  say  some.  That  she  hath  en- 
grossed us  is  true,  and  defended  the  continent  at  our  ex- 
pense as  well  as  her  own,  is  admitted,  and  she  would  have 
defended  Turkey  from  the  same  motives — viz.,  for  the  sake 
of  trade  and  dominion. 

Alas!  we  have  been  long  led  away  by  ancient  preju- 
dices, and  made  large  sacrifices  to  superstition.  We  have 
boasted  the  protection  of  Great  Britain  without  consider- 
ing that  her  motive  was  interest,  not  attachment;  and  that 
she  did  not  protect  us  from  our  enemies  on  our  account, 
but  from  her  enemies  on  her  own  account,  from  those  who 
had  no  quarrel  with  us  on  any  other  account,  and  who  will 
always  be  our  enemies  on  the  same  account.  Let  Britain 
waive  her  pretensions  to  the  continent,  or  the  continent 
throw  off  the  dependence,  and  we  should  be  at  peace  with 
France  and  Spain  were  they  at  war  with  Britain.  The 
miseries  of  Hanover's  last  war  ought  to  warn  us  against 
connections. 

It  hath  lately  been  asserted  in  Parliament  that  the  colo- 
nies have  no  relation  to  each  other  but  through  the  parent 
country — i.  e.,  that  Pennsylvania  and  the  Jerseys,  and  so 
on  for  the  rest,  are  sister  colonies  by  way  of  England ;  that 
is  certainly  a  very  roundabout  way  of  proving  relation- 
ship, but  it  is  the  nearest  and  only  true  way  of  proving 
enemyship,  if  I  may  so  call  it.  France  and  Spain  never 
were,  nor  perhaps  ever  will  be,  our  enemies  as  Americans, 
but  as  our  being  the  subjects  of  Great  Britain. 

But  Britain  is  the  parent  country,  say  some.    Then  the 


214 


PAINE 


more  shame  upon  her  conduct.  Even  brutes  do  not  de- 
vour their  young,  nor  savages  make  war  upon  their  fami- 
lies; wherefore  the  assertion,  if  true,  turns  to  her  reproach; 
but  it  happens  not  to  be  true,  or  only  partly  so,  and  the 
phrase  parent  or  mother  country  hath  been  jesuitically 
adopted  by  the  king  and  his  parasites,  with  a  low  papistical 
design  of  gaining  an  unfair  bias  on  the  credulous  weakness 
of  our  minds.  Europe,  and  not  England,  is  the  parent 
country  of  America.  This  New  World  hath  been  the 
asylum  for  the  persecuted  lovers  of  civil  and  religious  lib- 
erty from  every  part  of  Europe.  Hither  have  they  fled, 
not  from  the  tender  embraces  of  the  mother,  but  from  the 
cruelty  of  the  monster;  and  it  is  so  far  true  of  England 
that  the  same  tyranny  which  drove  the  first  emigrants  from 
home  pursues  their  descendants  still. 

In  this  extensive  quarter  of  the  globe  we  forget  the 
narrow  limits  of  three  hundred  and  sixty  miles  (the  ex- 
tent of  England),  and  carry  our  friendship  on  a  larger 
scale;  we  claim  brotherhood  with  every  European  Chris- 
tian, and  triumph  in  the  generosity  of  the  sentiment. 

It  is  pleasant  to  observe  with  what  regular  gradations 
we  surmount  local  prejudices,  as  we  enlarge  our  acquaint- 
ance with  the  world.  A  man  born  in  any  town  in  Eng- 
land divided  into  parishes  will  naturally  associate  with  most 
of  his  fellow-parishioners  (because  their  interest  in  many 
cases  will  be  common)  and  distinguish  him  by  the  name  of 
neighbour;  if  he  meet  him  but  a  few  miles  from  home  he 
drops  the  narrow  idea  of  a  street,  and  salutes  him  by  the 
name  of  townsman;  if  he  travel  out  of  the  county,  and 
meets  him  in  any  other,  he  forgets  the  minor  divisions  of 
street  and  town,  and  calls  him  countryman — i.  e.,  county- 
man;  but  if  in  their  foreign  excursions  they  should  associ- 
ate in  France  or  any  other  part  of  Europe,  their  local  re- 
membrance would  be  enlarged  into  that  of  Englishman. 
And  by  a  just  parity  of  reasoning,  all  Europeans  meeting 
in  America,  or  any  other  quarter  of  the  globe,  are  country- 
men; for  England,  Holland,  Germany,  or  Sweden,  when 
compared  with  the  whole,  stand  in  the  same  places  on  the 
larger  scale,  which  the  divisions  of  street,  town,  and 
county  do  on  the  smaller  one;  distinctions  too  limited  for 
continental  minds.  Not  one  third  of  the  inhabitants,  even 


COMMON   SENSE 


215 


of  this  province,  are  of  English  descent.  Wherefore,  I 
reprobate  the  phrase  of  parent  or  mother  country  applied 
to  England  only,  as  being  false,  selfish,  narrow,  and  un- 
generous. 

But,  admitting  that  we  were  all  of  English  descent, 
what  does  it  amount  to?  Nothing.  Britain  being  now  an 
open  enemy,  extinguishes  every  other  name  and  title,  and 
to  say  that  reconciliation  is  our  duty  is  truly  farcical.  The 
first  King  of  England,  of  the  present  line  (William  the  Con- 
queror), was  a  Frenchman,  and  half  the  peers  of  England 
are  descendants  from  the  same  country;  wherefore,  by  the 
same  method  of  reasoning,  England  ought  to  be  governed 
by  France. 

Much  hath  been  said  of  the  united  strength  of  Britain 
and  the  colonies,  that  in  conjunction  they  might  bid  defi- 
ance to  the  .vorld.  But  this  is  mere  presumption;  the 
fate  of  war  is  uncertain,  neither  do  the  expressions  mean 
anything;  for  this  continent  would  never  suffer  itself  to 
be  drained  of  inhabitants  to  support  the  British  arms  in 
either  Asia,  Africa,  or  Europe. 

Besides,  what  have  we  to  do  with  setting  the  world  at 
defiance?  Our  plan  is  commerce,  and  that,  well  attended 
to,  will  secure  us  the  peace  and  friendship  of  all  Europe; 
because  it  is  the  interest  of  all  Europe  to  have  America  a 
free  port.  Her  trade  will  always  be  a  protection,  and  her 
barrenness  of  gold  and  silver  secure  her  from  invaders. 

I  challenge  the  warmest  advocate  for  reconciliation  to 
show  a  single  advantage  that  this  continent  can  reap  by 
being  connected  with  Great  Britain.  I  repeat  the  chal- 
lenge; not  a  single  advantage  is  derived.  Our  corn  will 
fetch  its  price  in  any  market  in  Europe,  and  our  imported 
goods  must  be  paid  for,  buy  them  where  we  will. 

But  the  injuries  and  disadvantages  which  we  sustain 
by  that  connection  are  without  number,  and  our  duty  to 
mankind  at  large  as  well  as  to  ourselves  instructs  us  to 
renounce  the  alliance;  because  any  submission  to  or  de- 
pendence on  Great  Britain  tends  directly  to  involve  this 
continent  in  European  wars  and  quarrels,  and  sets  us  at 
variance  with  nations  who  would  otherwise  seek  our  friend- 
ship, and  against  whom  we  have  neither  anger  nor  com- 
plaint. As  Europe  is  our  market  for  trade,  we  ought  to 


PAINE 

form  no  partial  connection  with  any  part  of  it.  It  is  the 
true  interest  of  America  to  steer  clear  of  European  conten- 
tions, which  she  never  can  do  while,  by  her  dependence  on 
Britain,  she  is  made  the  make-weight  in  the  scale  of  Brit- 
ish politics. 

Europe  is  too  thickly  planted  with  kingdoms  to  be 
long  at  peace,  and  whenever  a  war  breaks  out  between 
England  and  any  foreign  power  the  trade  of  America  goes 
to  ruin  because  of  her  connection  with  Britain.  The  next 
war  may  not  turn  out  like  the  last;  and  should  it  not,  the 
advocates  for  reconciliation  now  will  be  wishing  for  separa- 
tion then,  because  neutrality  in  that  case  would  be  a  safer 
convoy  than  a  man-of-war.  Everything  that  is  right  or 
natural  pleads  for  separation.  The  blood  of  the  slain,  the 
weeping  voice  of  Nature,  cries,  "  Tis  time  to  part."  Even 
the  distance  at  which  the  Almighty  hath  placed  England 
and  America,  is  a  strong  and  natural  proof  that  the  author- 
ity of  the  one  over  the  other  was  never  the  design  of 
Heaven.  The  time  likewise  at  which  the  continent  was  dis- 
covered adds  weight  to  the  argument,  and  the  manner  in 
which  it  was  peopled  increases  the  force  of  it.  The  Refor- 
mation was  preceded  by  the  discovery  of  America,  as  if 
the  Almighty  graciously  meant  to  open  a  sanctuary  to  the 
persecuted  in  future  years,  when  home  should  afford  nei- 
ther friendship  nor  safety. 

The  authority  of  Great  Britain  over  this  continent  is  a 
form  of  government  which  sooner  or  later  must  have  an 
end;  and  a  serious  mind  can  draw  no  true  pleasure  by  look- 
ing forward  under  the  painful  and  positive  conviction  that 
what  he  calls  "  the  present  constitution  "  is  merely  tempo- 
rary. As  parents,  we  can  have  no  joy,  knowing  that  this 
government  is  not  sufficiently  lasting  to  insure  anything 
which  we  may  bequeath  to  posterity;  and  by  a  plain 
method  of  argument,  as  we  are  running  the  next  genera- 
tion into  debt,  we  ought  to  do  the  work  of  it,  otherwise 
we  use  them  meanly  and  pitifully.  In  order  to  discover  the 
line  of  our  duty  rightly,  we  should  take  our  children  in 
our  hand,  and  fix  our  station  a  few  years  farther  into  life; 
that  eminence  will  present  a  prospect  which  a  few  present 
fears  and  prejudices  conceal  from  our  sight. 

Though  I  would  carefully  avoid  giving  unnecessary 


COMMON   SENSE 


2I7 


offence,  yet  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  all  those  who 
espouse  the  doctrine  of  reconciliation  may  be  included 
within  the  following  descriptions:  Interested  men,  who  are 
not  to  be  trusted;  weak  men,  who  can  not  see;  prejudiced 
men,  who  will  not  see;  and  a  certain  set  of  moderate  men, 
who  think  better  of  the  European  world  than  it  deserves; 
and  this  last  class,  by  an  ill-judged  deliberation,  will  be  the 
cause  of  more  calamities  to  this  continent  than  all  the  other 
three. 

It  is  the  good  fortune  of  many  to  live  distant  from  the 
scene  of  sorrow;  the  evil  is  not  sufficiently  brought  to 
their  doors  to  make  them  feel  the  precariousness  with 
which  all  American  property  is  possessed.  But  let  our 
imaginations  transport  us  a  few  moments  to  Boston;  that 
seat  of  wretchedness  will  teach  us  wisdom,  and  instruct 
us  forever  to  renounce  a  power  in  whom  we  can  have  no 
trust.  The  inhabitants  of  that  unfortunate  city,  who  but 
a  few  months  ago  were  in  ease  and  affluence,  have  now  no 
other  alternative  than  to  stay  and  starve  or  turn  out  to 
beg — endangered  by  the  fire  of  their  friends  if  they  con- 
tinue within  the  city,  and  plundered  by  the  soldiery  if  they 
leave  it.  In  their  present  situation  they  are  prisoners  with- 
out the  hope  of  redemption,  and  in  a  general  attack  for 
their  relief,  they  would  be  exposed  to  the  fury  of  both 
armies. 

Men  of  passive  tempers  look  somewhat  lightly  over  the 
offences  of  Britain,  and,  still  hoping  for  the  best,  are  apt 
to  call  out,  "  Come,  come,  we  shall  be  friends  again,  for  all 
this."  But  examine  the  passions  and  feelings  of  mankind, 
bring  the  doctrine  of  reconciliation  to  the  touchstone  of 
Nature,  and  then  tell  me  whether  you  can  hereafter  love, 
honour,  and  faithfully  serve  the  power  that  hath  carried 
fire  and  sword  into  your  land?  If  you  can  not  do  all 
these,  then  are  you  only  deceiving  yourselves,  and  by  your 
delay  bringing  ruin  upon  your  posterity.  Your  future  con- 
nection with  Britain,  whom  you  can  neither  love  nor  hon- 
our, will  be  forced  and  unnatural,  and  being  formed  only 
on  the  plan  of  present  convenience,  will  in  a  little  time  fall 
into  a  relapse  more  wretched  than  the  first.  But  if  you 
say  you  can  still  pass  the  violations  over,  then  I  ask:  Hath 
your  house  been  burned?  Hath  your  property  been  de- 


218  PAINE 

stroyed  before  your  face?  Are  your  wife  and  children 
destitute  of  a  bed  to  lie  on,  or  bread  to  live  on?  Have  you 
lost  a  parent  or  a  child  by  their  hands,  and  yourself  the 
ruined  and  wretched  survivor?  If  you  have  not,  then  are 
you  not  a  judge  of  those  who  have?  But  if  you  have,  and 
can  still  shake  hands  with  the  murderers,  then  are  you  un- 
worthy the  name  of  husband,  father,  friend,  or  lover,  and 
whatever  may  be  your  rank  or  title  in  life,  you  have  the 
heart  of  a  coward  and  the  spirit  of  a  sycophant. 

This  is  not  inflaming  or  exaggerating  matters,  but  try- 
ing them  by  those  feelings  and  affections  which  Nature 
justifies,  and  without  which  we  should  be  incapable  of  dis- 
charging the  social  duties  of  life  or  enjoying  the  felicities 
of  it.  I  mean  not  to  exhibit  horror  for  the  purpose  of 
provoking  revenge,  but  to  awaken  us  from  fatal  and  un- 
manly slumbers,  that  we  may  pursue  determinately  some 
fixed  object.  It  is  not  in  the  power  of  Britain  or  of  Europe 
to  conquer  America,  if  she  does  not  conquer  herself  by 
delay  and  timidity.  The  present  winter  is  worth  an  age 
if  rightly  employed,  but  if  lost  or  neglected  the  whole 
continent  will  partake  of  the  misfortune;  and  there  is  no 
punishment  which  that  man  will  not  deserve,  be  he  who, 
or  what,  or  where  he  will,  that  may  be  the  means  of  sacri- 
ficing a  season  so  precious  and  useful. 

It  is  repugnant  to  reason,  and  the  universal  order  of 
things,  to  all  examples  from  former  ages,  to  suppose  that 
this  continent  can  longer  remain  subject  to  any  external 
power.  The  most  sanguine  in  Britain  do  not  think  so. 
The  utmost  stretch  of  human  wisdom  can  not,  at  this  time, 
compass  a  plan,  short  of  separation,  which  can  promise 
the  continent  even  a  year's  security.  Reconciliation  is  now 
a  fallacious  dream.  Nature  hath  deserted  the  connection, 
and  art  can  not  supply  her  place.  For,  as  Milton  wisely 
expresses,  "  Never  can  true  reconcilement  grow  where 
wounds  of  deadly  hate  have  pierced  so  deep." 

Every  quiet  method  for  peace  hath  been  ineffectual. 
Our  prayers  have  been  rejected  with  disdain,  and  only 
tended  to  convince  us  that  nothing  flatters  vanity,  or  con- 
firms obstinacy  in  kings,  more  than  repeated  petitioning — 
nothing  hath  contributed  more  than  this  very  measure  to 
make  the  kings  of  Europe  absolute:  witness  Denmark  and 


COMMON   SENSE  219 

Sweden.  Wherefore,  since  nothing  but  blows  will  do,  for 
God's  sake  let  us  come  to  a  final  separation,  and  not  leave 
the  next  generation  to  be  cutting  throats,  under  the  vio- 
lated unmeaning  names  of  parent  and  child! 

To  say  they  will  never  attempt  it  again  is  idle  and 
visionary;  we  thought  so  at  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act, 
yet  a  year  or  two  undeceived  us;  as  well  may  we  suppose 
that  nations  which  have  been  once  defeated  will  never  re- 
new the  quarrel. 

As  to  government  matters,  it  is  not  in  the  power  of 
Britain  to  do  this  continent  justice;  the  business  of  it  will 
soon  be  too  weighty  and  intricate  to  be  managed,  with  any 
tolerable  degree  of  convenience,  by  a  power  so  distant  from 
us,  and  so  very  ignorant  of  us;  for  if  they  can  not  conquer 
us  they  can  not  govern  us.  To  be  always  running  three 
or  four  thousand  miles  with  a  tale  or  a  petition,  waiting 
four  or  five  months  for  an  answer,  which,  when  obtained, 
requires  five  or  six  more  to  explain  it  in,  will  in  a  few  years 
be  looked  upon  as  folly  and  childishness.  There  was  a 
time  when  it  was  proper,  and  there  is  a  proper  time  for  it 
to  cease. 

Small  islands,  not  capable  of  protecting  themselves,  are 
the  proper  objects  for  kingdoms  to  take  under  their  care; 
but  there  is  something  absurd  in  supposing  a  continent 
to  be  perpetually  governed  by  an  island.  In  no  instance 
hath  Nature  made  the  satellite  larger  than  its  primary 
planet;  and  as  England  and  America,  with  respect  to  each 
other,  reverse  the  common  order  of  Nature,  it  is  evident 
that  they  belong  to  different  systems:  England  to  Europe, 
America  to  itself. 

I  am  not  induced  by  motives  of  pride,  party,  or  resent- 
ment to  espouse  the  doctrine  of  separation  and  independ- 
ence; I  am  clearly,  positively,  and  conscientiously  per- 
suaded that  it  is  the  true  interest  of  this  continent  to  be  so; 
that  everything  short  of  that  is  mere  patchwork;  that  it 
can  afford  no  lasting  felicity;  that  it  is  leaving  the  sword 
to  our  children,  and  shrinking  back  at  a  time  when  going 
a  little  further  would  have  rendered  this  continent  the  glory 
of  the  earth. 

As  Britain  hath  not  manifested  the  least  inclination  to- 
ward a  compromise,  we  may  be  assured  that  no  terms  can 


220  PAINE 

be  obtained  worthy  the  acceptance  of  the  continent,  or  any 
ways  equal  to  the  expense  of  blood  and  treasure  we  have 
been  already  put  to. 

The  object  contended  for  ought  always  to  bear  some 
just  proportion  to  the  expense.  The  removal  of  North,  or 
the  whole  detestable  junto,  is  a  matter  unworthy  the  mil- 
lions we  have  expended.  A  temporary  stoppage  of  trade 
was  an  inconvenience  which  would  have  sufficiently  bal- 
anced the  repeal  of  all  the  acts  complained  of,  had  such 
repeals  been  obtained;  but  if  the  whole  continent  must 
take  up  arms,  if  every  man  must  be  a  soldier,  it  is  scarcely 
worth  our  while  to  fight  against  a  contemptible  ministry 
only.  Dearly,  dearly  do  we  pay  for  the  repeal  of  the  acts, 
if  that  is  all  we  fight  for;  for,  in  a  just  estimation,  it  is  as 
great  a  folly  to  pay  a  Bunker-Hill  price  for  law  as  for  land. 
I  have  always  considered  the  independency  of  this  conti- 
nent as  an  event  which  sooner  or  later  must  take  place, 
and,  from  the  late  rapid  progress  of  the  continent  to  ma- 
turity, the  event  can  not  be  far  off.  Wherefore,  on  the 
breaking  out  of  hostilities,  it  was  not  worth  the  while  to 
have  disputed  a  matter  which  time  would  have  finally  re- 
dressed, unless  we  meant  to  be  in  earnest;  otherwise,  it  is 
like  wasting  an  estate  on  a  suit  at  law  to  regulate  the  tres- 
passes of  a  tenant  whose  lease  is  just  expiring.  No  man 
was  a  warmer  wisher  for  a  reconciliation  than  myself  be- 
fore the  fatal  iQth  of  April,  I775,1  but  the  moment  the 
event  of  that  day  was  made  known  I  rejected  the  hard- 
ened, sullen-tempered  Pharaoh  of  England  forever,  and  dis- 
dain the  wretch  that,  with  the  pretended  title  of  Father  of 
his  People,  can  unfeelingly  hear  of  their  slaughter  and  com- 
posedly sleep  with  their  blood  upon  his  soul. 

But  admitting  that  matters  were  now  made  up,  what 
would  be  the  event?  I  answer,  the  ruin  of  the  continent. 
And  that  for  several  reasons: 

i.  The  powers  of  governing  still  remaining  in  the 
hands  of  the  king,  he  will  have  a  negative  over  the  whole 
legislation  of  this  continent.  And  as  he  hath  shown  him- 
self such  an  inveterate  enemy  to  liberty,  and  discovered 
such  a  thirst  for  arbitrary  power,  is  he,  or  is  he  not,  a 
proper  person  to  say  to  these  colonies,  "  You  shall  make 
no  laws  but  what  I  please  "?  And  is  there  any  inhabitant 


COMMON   SENSE  221 

of  America  so  ignorant  as  not  to  know  that,  according  to 
what  is  called  the  present  constitution,  this  continent  can 
make  no  laws  but  what  the  king  gives  leave  to?  And  is 
there  any  man  so  unwise  as 'not  to  see  that,  considering 
what  has  happened,  he  will  suffer  no  law  to  be  made  here 
but  such  as  suits  his  purpose?  We  may  be  as  effectually 
enslaved  by  the  want  of  laws  in  America,  as  by  submitting 
to  laws  made  for  us  in  England.  After  matters  are  made 
up  (as  it  is  called)  can  there  be  any  doubt  but  the  whole 
power  of  the  crown  will  be  exerted  to  keep  this  continent 
as  low  and  humble  as  possible?  Instead  of  going  forward 
we  shall  go  backward,  or  be  perpetually  quarrelling,  or 
ridiculously  petitioning.  We  are  already  greater  than  the 
king  wishes  us  to  be,  and  will  he  not  hereafter  endeavour 
to  make  us  less?  To  bring  the  matter  to  one  point,  is  the 
power  who  is  jealous  of  our  prosperity  a  proper  power  to 
govern  us?  Whoever  says  "  No!  "  to  this  question  is  an 
independent,  for  independency  means  no  more  than  this, 
whether  we  shall  make  our  own  laws,  or  whether  the  king, 
the  greatest  enemy  which  this  continent  hath,  or  can  have, 
shall  tell  us,  "  There  shall  be  no  laws  but  such  as  I  like." 

But  the  king,  you  will  say,  has  a  negative  in  England; 
the  people  there  can  make  no  laws  without  his  consent.  In 
point  of  right  and  good  order,  it  is  something  very  ridicu- 
lous that  a  youth  of  twenty-one  (which  hath  often  hap- 
pened) shall  say  to  several  millions  of  people,  older  and 
wiser  than  himself,  "  I  forbid  this  or  that  act  of  yours  to  be 
law."  But  in  this  place  I  decline  this  sort  of  reply,  though 
I  will  never  cease  to  expose  the  absurdity  of  it;  and  only 
answer  that,  England  being  the  king's  residence,  and 
America  not,  makes  quite  another  case.  The  king's  nega- 
tive here  is  ten  times  more  dangerous  and  fatal  than  it  can 
be  in  England;  for  there  he  will  scarcely  refuse  his  consent 
to  a  bill  for  putting  England  into  as  strong  a  state  of  de- 
fence as  possible,  and  in  America  he  would  never  suffer 
such  a  bill  to  be  passed. 

America  is  only  a  secondary  object  in  the  system  of 
British  politics — England  consults  the  good  of  this  coun- 
try no  further  than  it  answers  her  own  purpose.  Where- 
fore, her  own  interest  leads  her  to  suppress  the  growth  of 
ours  in  every  case  which  doth  not  promote  her  advantage, 


222  PAINE 

or  in  the  least  interferes  with  it.  A  pretty  state  we  should 
soon  be  in  under  a  second-hand  government,  considering 
what  has  happened!  Men  do  not  change  from  enemies  to 
friends  by  the  alteration  of  a  name;  and  in  order  to  show 
that  reconciliation  now  is  a  dangerous  doctrine,  I  affirm 
that  it  would  be  policy  in  the  king  at  this  time  to  repeal 
the  acts,  for  the  sake  of  reinstating  himself  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  provinces;  in  order  that  he  may  accomplish 
by  craft  and  subtlety,  in  the  long  run,  what  he  can  not  do 
by  force  in  the  short  one.  Reconciliation  and  ruin  are 
nearly  related. 

2.  That  as  even  the  best  terms  which  we  can  expect  to 
obtain  can  amount  to  no  more  than  a  temporary  expedient, 
or  a  kind  of  government  by  guardianship,  which  can  last 
no  longer  than  till  the  colonies  come  of  age,  so  the  gen- 
eral face  and  state  of  things  in  the  interim  will  be  unsettled 
and  unpromising.  Emigrants  of  property  will  not  choose 
to  come  to  a  country  whose  form  of  government  hangs  but 
by  a  thread,  and  which  is  every  day  tottering  on  the  brink 
of  commotion  and  disturbance;  and  numbers  of  the  present 
inhabitants  would  lay  hold  of  the  interval  to  dispose  of  their 
effects  and  quit  the  continent. 

But  the  most  powerful  of  all  arguments  is  that  nothing 
but  independence — i.  e.,  a  continental  form  of  government 
— can  keep  the  peace  of  the  continent  and  preserve  it  in- 
violate from  civil  wars.  I  dread  the  event  of  a  reconcilia- 
tion with  Britain  now,  as  it  is  more  than  probable  that  it 
will  be  followed  by  a  revolt  somewhere  or  other,  the  con- 
sequences of  which  may  be  far  more  fatal  than  all  the 
malice  of  Britain. 

Thousands  are  already  ruined  by  British  barbarity. 
Thousands  more  will  probably  suffer  the  same  fate.  Those 
men  have  other  feelings  than  us  who  have  nothing  suf- 
fered. All  they  now  possess  is  liberty;  what  they  before 
enjoyed  is  sacrificed  to  its  service;  and  having  nothing 
more  to  lose,  they  disdain  submission.  Besides,  the  gen- 
eral temper  of  the  colonies  toward  a  British  government 
will  be  like  that  of  a  youth  who  is  nearly  out  of  his  time: 
they  will  care  very  little  about  her.  And  a  government 
which  can  not  preserve  the  peace  is  no  government  at  all, 
and  in  that  case  we  pay  our  money  for  nothing.  And 


COMMON   SENSE 

pray  what  is  it  that  Britain  can  do,  whose  power  will  be 
wholly  on  paper,  should  a  civil  tumult  break  out  the  very 
day  after  reconciliation?  I  have  heard  some  men  say, 
many  of  whom  I  believe  spoke  without  thinking,  that  they 
dreaded  an  independence,  fearing  that  it  would  produce 
civil  wars.  It  is  but  seldom  that  our  first  thoughts  are 
truly  correct,  and  that  is  the  case  here;  for  there  is  ten 
times  more  to  dread  from  a  patched-up  connection  than 
from  independence.  I  make  the  sufferer's  case  my  own, 
and  I  protest,  that  were  I  driven  from  house  and  home, 
my  property  destroyed,  and  my  circumstances  ruined,  as 
a  man  sensible  of  injuries  I  could  never  relish  the  doctrine 
of  reconciliation  or  consider  myself  bound  thereby. 

The  colonies  have  manifested  such  a  spirit  of  good 
order  and  obedience  to  continental  government  as  is  suf- 
ficient to  make  every  reasonable  person  easy  and  happy  on 
that  head.  No  man  can  assign  the  least  pretence  for  his 
fears,  on  any  other  grounds  than  such  as  are  truly  childish 
and  ridiculous — viz.,  that  one  colony  will  be  striving  for 
superiority  over  another. 

Where  there  are  no  distinctions  there  can  be  no  su- 
periority; perfect  equality  affords  no  temptation.  The 
republics  of  Europe  are  all  (and  we  may  say  always)  in 
peace.  Holland  and  Switzerland  are  without  wars,  foreign 
or  domestic.  Monarchical  governments,  it  is  true,  are 
never  long  at  rest;  the  crown  itself  is  a  temptation  to  en- 
terprising ruffians  at  home,  and  that  degree  of  pride  and 
insolence  ever  attendant  on  regal  authority  swells  into  a 
rupture  with  foreign  powers  in  instances  where  a  repub- 
lican government,  by  being  formed  on  more  natural  prin- 
ciples, would  negotiate  the  mistake. 

If  there  is  any  true  cause  of  fear  respecting  independ- 
ence, it  is  because  no  plan  is  yet  laid  down.  Men  do  not 
see  their  way  out;  wherefore,  as  an  opening  into  that  busi- 
ness, I  offer  the  following  hints,  at  the  same  time  mod- 
estly affirming  that  I  have  no  other  opinion  of  them  myself 
than  that  they  may  be  the  means  of  giving  rise  to  some- 
thing better.  Could  the  straggling  thoughts  of  individuals 
be  collected,  they  would  frequently  form  materials  for  wise 
and  able  men  to  improve  into  useful  matter. 

Let  the  assemblies  be  annual,  with  a  president  only. 


224  PAINE 

The  representation  more  equal.  Their  business  wholly  do- 
mestic, and  subject  to  the  authority  of  a  continental  con- 
gress. 

Let  each  colony  be  divided  into  six,  eight,  or  ten  con- 
venient districts,  each  district  to  send  a  proper  number  of 
delegates  to  Congress,  so  that  each  colony  send  at  least 
thirty.  The  whole  number  in  Congress  will  be  at  least 
three  hundred  and  ninety.  Each  Congress  to  sit  ...  and 
to  choose  a  president  by  the  following  method:  When  the 
delegates  are  met,  let  a  colony  be  taken  from  the  whole 
thirteen  colonies  by  lot,  after  which  let  the  Congress 
choose  (by  ballot)  a  president  from  out  of  the  delegates  of 
that  province.  In  the  next  Congress,  let  a  colony  be  taken 
by  lot  from  twelve  only,  omitting  that  colony  from  which 
the  president  was  taken  in  the  former  Congress,  and  so 
proceeding  on  till  the  whole  thirteen  shall  have  had  their 
proper  rotation.  And  in  order  that  nothing  may  pass  into 
a  law  but  what  is  satisfactorily  just,  not  less  than  three  fifths 
of  the  Congress  to  be  called  a  majority.  He  that  will 
promote  discord  under  a  government  so  equally  formed  as 
this  would  have  joined  Lucifer  in  his  revolt. 

But  as  there  is  a  peculiar  delicacy,  from  whom,  or  in 
what  manner,  this  business  must  first  arise,  and  as  it  seems 
most  agreeable  and  consistent  that  it  should  come  from 
some  intermediate  body  between  the  governed  and  the  gov- 
ernors— that  is,  between  the  Congress  and  the  people — 
let  a  Continental  Conference  be  held,  in  the  following  man- 
ner, and  for  the  following  purpose: 

A  committee  of  twenty-six  members  of  Congress — viz., 
two  for  each  colony.  Two  members  from  each  House  of 
Assembly,  or  provincial  convention;  and  five  representa- 
tives of  the  people  at  large,  to  be  chosen  in  the  capital  city 
or  town  of  each  province,  for  and  in  behalf  of  the  whole 
province,  by  as  many  qualified  voters  as  shall  think  proper 
to  attend  from  all  parts  of  the  province  for  that  purpose; 
or,  if  more  convenient,  the  representatives  may  be  chosen 
in  two  or  three  of  the  most  populous  parts  thereof.  In 
this  conference,  thus  assembled,  will  be  united  the  two 
grand  principles  of  business,  knowledge  and  power.  The 
members  of  Congress,  assemblies,  or  conventions,  by  hav- 
ing had  experience  in  national  concerns,  will  be  able  and 


COMMON   SENSE 


225 


useful  counsellors,  and  the  whole,  being  empowered  by 
the  people,  will  have  a  truly  legal  authority. 

The  conferring  members  being  met,  let  their  business 
be  to  frame  a  Continental  Charter,  or  Charter  of  the  United 
Colonies  (answering  to  what  is  called  the  Magna  Charta 
of  England),  fixing  the  number  and  manner  of  choosing 
members  of  Congress,  and  members  of  Assembly,  with 
their  date  of  sitting,  and  drawing  the  line  of  business  and 
jurisdiction  between  them  (always  remembering  that  our 
strength  is  continental,  not  provincial);  securing  freedom 
and  property  to  all  men,  and  above  all  things,  the  free 
exercise  of  religion,  according  to  the  dictates  of  conscience, 
with  such  other  matter  as  it  is  necessary  for  a  charter  to 
contain.  Immediately  after  which,  the  said  conference  to 
dissolve,  and  the  bodies  which  shall  be  chosen  conformable 
to  the  said  charter  to  be  the  legislators  and  governors  of 
this  continent  for  the  time  being:  whose  peace  and  happi- 
ness may  God  preserve,  Amen. 

Should  any  body  of  men  be  hereafter  delegated  for  this 
or  some  similar  purpose,  I  offer  them  the  following  ex- 
tracts from  that  wise  observer  on  governments,  Dragonetti. 
"  The  science,"  says  he,  "  of  the  politician  consists  in  fix- 
ing the  true  point  of  happiness  and  freedom.  Those  men 
would  deserve  the  gratitude  of  ages  who  should  discover 
a  mode  of  government  that  contained  the  greatest  sum 
of  individual  happiness  with  the  least  national  expense." 

But  where,  say  some,  is  the  king  of  America?  I'll  tell 
you,  friend,  he  reigns  above,  and  doth  not  make  havoc  of 
mankind  like  the  royal  brute  of  Britain.  Yet  that  we  may 
not  appear  to  be  defective  even  in  earthly  honours,  let  a 
day  be  solemnly  set  apart  for  proclaiming  the  charter; 
let  it  be  brought  forth  placed  on  the  divine  law,  the  word 
of  God ;  let  a  crown  be  placed  thereon,  by  which  the  world 
may  know  that,  so  far  as  we  approve  of  monarchy,  in  Amer- 
ica the  law  is  king.  For  as  in  absolute  governments  the 
king  is  law,  so  in  free  countries  the  law  ought  to  be  king; 
and  there  ought  to  be  no  other.  But  lest  any  ill  use  should 
afterward  arise,  let  the  crown  at  the  conclusion  of  the  cere- 
mony be  abolished,  and  scattered  among  the  people  whose 
right  it  is. 

A  government  of  our  own  is  our  natural  right,  and 


226  PAINE 

when  a  man  seriously  reflects  on  the  precariousness  of 
human  affairs  he  will  become  convinced  that  it  is  infinitely 
wiser  and  safer  to  form  a  constitution  of  our  own  in  a  cool, 
deliberate  manner,  while  we  have  it  in  our  power,  than  to 
trust  such  an  interesting  event  to  time  and  chance.  If  we 
omit  it  now,  some  Masaniello  2  may  hereafter  arise,  who, 
laying  hold  of  popular  disquietudes,  may  collect  together 
the  desperate  and  the  discontented,  and  by  assuming  to 
themselves  the  powers  of  government,  finally  sweep  away 
the  liberties  of  the  continent  like  a  deluge.  Should  the 
government  of  America  return  again  into  the  hands  of 
Britain,  the  tottering  situation  of  things  will  be  a  tempta- 
tion for  some  desperate  adventurer  to  try  his  fortune;  and 
in  such  a  case,  what  relief  can  Britain  give?  Ere  she  could 
hear  the  news  the  fatal  business  might  be  done,  and  our- 
selves suffering  like  the  wretched  Britons  under  the  oppres- 
sion of  the  Conqueror.  Ye  that  oppose  independence 
now,  ye  know  not  what  ye  do;  ye  are  opening  a  door  to 
eternal  tyranny  by  keeping  vacant  the  seat  of  government. 
There  are  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  who  would 
think  it  glorious  to  expel  from  the  continent  that  barbarous 
and  hellish  power  which  hath  stirred  up  the  Indians  and 
negroes  to  destroy  us.  The  cruelty  hath  a  double  guilt: 
it  is  dealing  brutally  by  us,  and  treacherously  by  them. 

To  talk  of  friendship  with  those  in  whom  our  reason 
forbids  us  to  have  faith,  and  our  affections,  wounded 
through  a  thousand  pores,  instruct  us  to  detest,  is  mad- 
ness and  folly.  Every  day  wears  out  the  little  remains  of 
kindred  between  us  and  them;  and  can  there  be  any  reason 
to  hope  that,  as  the  relationship  expires,  the  affection  will 
increase,  or  that  we  shall  agree  better  when  we  have  ten 
times  more  and  greater  concerns  to  quarrel  over  than  ever? 

Ye  that  tell  us  of  harmony  and  reconciliation,  can  ye 
restore  to  us  the  time  that  is  past?  Can  ye  give  to  pros- 
titution its  former  innocence?  Neither  can  ye  reconcile 
Britain  and  America.  The  last  cord  now  is  broken,  the 
people  of  England  are  presenting  addresses  against  us. 
There  are  injuries  which  Nature  can  not  forgive;  she  would 
cease  to  be  Nature  if  she  did.  As  well  can  the  lover  for- 
give the  ravisher  of  his  mistress  as  the  continent  forgive 
the  murders  of  Britain.  The  Almighty  hath  implanted 


COMMON   SENSE 


227 


within  us  these  unextinguishable  feelings  for  good  and 
wise  purposes.  They  are  the  guardians  of  his  image  in 
our  hearts,  and  distinguish  us  from  the  herd  of  common 
animals.  The  social  compact  would  dissolve,  and  justice 
be  extirpated  from  the  earth,  or  have  only  a  casual  exist- 
ence, were  we  callous  to  the  touches  of  affection.  The 
robber  and  the  murderer  would  often  escape  unpunished 
did  not  the  injuries  which  our  tempers  sustain  provoke  us 
into  justice. 

O  ye  that  love  mankind!  Ye  that  dare  oppose,  not 
only  the  tyranny  but  the  tyrant,  stand  forth!  Every  spot 
of  the  Old  World  is  overrun  with  oppression.  Freedom 
hath  been  hunted  around  the  globe.  Asia  and  Africa  have 
long  expelled  her.  Europe  regards  her  like  a  stranger, 
and  England  hath  given  her  warning  to  depart.  Oh,  re- 
ceive the  fugitive,  and  prepare  in  time  an  asylum  for  man- 
kind. 

NOTES 

1  The  date  of  the  massacre  at  Lexington. 

1  Tommaso  Aniello,  otherwise  Masaniello,  a  fisherman  of  Naples, 
who  after  spiriting  up  his  countrymen  in  the  public  market-place, 
against  the  oppression  of  the  Spaniards,  to  whom  the  place  was  then 
subject,  prompted  them  to  revolt,  and  in  the  space  of  a  day  became 
king. 


THE  CRISIS 

THESE  are  the  times  that  try  men's  souls.  The 
summer  soldier  and  the  sunshine  patriot  will,  in 
this  crisis,  shrink  from  the  service  of  his  country; 
but  he  that  stands  it  now  deserves  the  love  and  thanks  of 
man  and  woman.  Tyranny,  like  hell,  is  not  easily  con- 
quered; yet  we  have  this  consolation  with  us,  that  the 
harder  the  conflict  the  more  gorious  the  triumph.  What 
we  obtain  too  cheap  we  esteem  too  lightly:  'tis  dearness 
only  that  gives  everything  its  value.  Heaven  knows  how 
to  put  a  proper  price  upon  its  goods;  and  it  would  be 
strange  indeed  if  so  celestial  an  article  as  freedom  should 
not  be  highly  rated.  Britain,  with  an  army  to  enforce 
her  tyranny,  has  declared  that  she  has  a  right  (not  only 
to  tax  but)  "  to  bind  us  in  all  cases  whatsoever,"  and  if 
being  bound  in  that  manner  is  not  slavery,  then  is  there 
not  such  a  thing  as  slavery  upon  earth.  Even  the  ex- 
pression is  impious,  for  so  unlimited  a  power  can  belong 
only  to  God. 

Whether  the  independence  of  the  continent  was  de- 
clared too  soon,  or  delayed  too  long,  I  will  not  now  enter 
into  as  an  argument;  my  own  simple  opinion  is,  that  had 
it  been  eight  months  earlier  it  would  have  been  much 
better.  We  did  not  make  a  proper  use  of  last  winter, 
neither  could  we,  while  we  were  in  a  dependent  state. 
However,  the  fault,  if  it  were  one,  was  all  our  own;  we 
have  none  to  blame  but  ourselves.  But  no  great  deal  is 
lost  yet;  all  that  Howe  has  been  doing  for  this  month 
past  is  rather  a  ravage  than  a  conquest,  which  the  spirit 
of  the  Jerseys  a  year  ago  would  have  quickly  repulsed, 
and  which  time  and  a  little  resolution  will  soon  recover. 

I  have  as  little  superstition  in  me  as  any  man  living, 
but  my  secret  opinion  has  ever  been,  and  still  is,  that 

228 


THE   CRISIS 


229 


God  Almighty  will  not  give  up  a  people  to  military  de- 
struction, or  leave  them  unsupportedly  to  perish,  who 
have  so  earnestly  and  so  repeatedly  sought  to  avoid  the 
calamities  of  war  by  every  decent  method  which  wisdom 
could  invent.  Neither  have  I  so  much  of  the  infidel  in 
me  as  to  suppose  that  he  has  relinquished  the  government 
of  the  world  and  given  us  up  to  the  care  of  devils;  and 
as  I  do  not,  I  can  not  see  on  what  grounds  the  King  of 
Britain  can  look  up  to  Heaven  for  help  against  us:  a 
common  murderer,  a  highwayman,  or  a  housebreaker  has 
as  good  a  pretence  as  he. 

Tis  surprising  to  see  how  rapidly  a  panic  will  some- 
times run  through  a  country.  All  nations  and  ages  have 
been  subject  to  them:  Britain  has  trembled  like  an  ague 
at  the  report  of  a  French  fleet  of  flat-bottomed  boats; 
and  in  the  fourteenth  century  the  whole  English  army, 
after  ravaging  the  kingdom  of  France,  was  driven  back 
like  men  petrified  with  fear;  and  this  brave  exploit  was 
performed  by  a  few  broken  forces  collected  and  headed 
by  a  woman,  Joan  of  Arc.  Would  that  Heaven  might 
inspire  some  Jersey  maid  to  spirit  up  her  countrymen, 
and  save  her  fair  fellow-sufferers  from  ravage  and  ravish- 
ment! Yet  panics,  in  some  cases,  have  their  uses;  they 
produce  as  much  good  as  hurt.  Their  duration  is  always 
short;  the  mind  soon  grows  through  them,  and  acquires 
a  firmer  habit  than  before.  But  their  peculiar  advantage 
is,  that  they  are  the  touchstones  of  sincerity  and  hypoc- 
risy, and  bring  things  and  men  to  light  which  might 
otherwise  have  lain  forever  undiscovered.  In  fact,  they 
have  the  same  effect  on  secret  traitors  which  an  imagi- 
nary apparition  would  have  upon  a  private  murderer.  They 
sift  out  the  hidden  thoughts  of.  man,  and  hold  them  up  in 
public  to  the  world.  Many  a  disguised  Tory  has  lately 
shown  his  head  that  shall  penitentially  solemnize  with 
curses  the  day  on  which  Howe  arrived  upon  the  Dela- 
ware. 

As  I  was  with  the  troops  at  Fort  Lee,  and  marched 
with  them  to  the  edge  of  Pennsylvania,  I  am  well  ac- 
quainted with  many  circumstances  which  those  who  live 
at  a  distance  know  but  little  or  nothing  of.  Our  situation 
there  was  exceedingly  cramped,  the  place  being  a  narrow 


230  PAINE 

neck  of  land  between  the  North  River  and  the  Hacken- 
sack.  Our  force  was  inconsiderable,  being  not  one  fourth 
so  great  as  Howe  could  bring  against  us.  We  had  no 
army  at  hand  to  have  relieved  the  garrison  had  we  shut 
ourselves  up  and  stood  on  our  defence.  Our  ammunition, 
light  artillery,  and  the  best  part  of  our  stores  had  been 
removed,  on  the  apprehension  that  Howe  would  endeav- 
our to  penetrate  the  Jerseys,  in  which  case  Fort  Lee  could 
be  of  no  use  to  us;  for  it  must  occur  to  every  thinking 
man,  whether  in  the  army  or  not,  that  these  kind  of  field 
forts  are  only  for  temporary  purposes,  and  last  in  use  no 
longer  than  the  enemy  directs  his  force  against  the  par- 
ticular object  which  such  forts  are  raised  to  defend.  Such 
was  our  situation  and  condition  at  Fort  Lee  on  the  morn- 
ing of  the  2Oth  of  November,  when  an  officer  arrived 
with  information  that  the  enemy  with  two  hundred  boats 
had  landed  about  seven  miles  above:  Major-General 
Greene,  who  commanded  the  garrison,  immediately  or- 
dered them  under  arms,  and  sent  express  to  General 
Washington  at  the  town  of  Hackensack,  distant  by  the 
way  of  the  ferry  six  miles.  Our  first  object  was  to  secure 
the  bridge  over  the  Hackensack,  which  laid  up  the  river 
between  the  enemy  and  us,  about  six  miles  from  us  and 
three  from  them.  General  Washington  arrived  in  about 
three  quarters  of  an  hour,  and  marched  at  the  head  of  the 
troops  toward  the  bridge,  which  place  I  expected  we 
should  have  a  brush  for;  however,  they  did  not  choose  to 
dispute  it  with  us,  and  the  greatest  part  of  our  troops 
went  over  the  bridge,  the  rest  over  the  ferry,  except  some 
which  passed  at  a  mill  on  a  small  creek,  between  the  bridge 
and  the  ferry,  and  made  their  way  through  some  marshy 
grounds  up  to  the  town  of  Hackensack,  and  there  passed 
the  river.  We  brought  off  as  much  baggage  as  the 
wagons  could  contain;  the  rest  was  lost.  The  simple  ob- 
ject was  to  bring  off  the  garrison,  and  march  them  on  till 
they  could  be  strengthened  by  the  Jersey  or  Pennsylvania 
militia,  so  as  to  be  enabled  to  make  a  stand.  We  stayed 
four  days  at  Newark,  collected  our  outposts  with  some 
of  the  Jersey  militia,  and  marched  out  twice  to  meet  the 
enemy  on  being  informed  that  they  were  advancing, 
though  our  numbers  were  greatly  inferior  to  theirs.  Howe, 


THE   CRISIS  231 

in  my  little  opinion,  committed  a  great  error  in  general- 
ship in  not  throwing  a  body  of  forces  off  from  Staten 
Island  through  Amboy,  by  which  means  he  might  have 
seized  all  our  stores  at  Brunswick,  and  intercepted  our 
march  into  Pennsylvania:  but  if  we  believe  the  power  of 
hell  to  be  limited,  we  must  likewise  believe  that  their 
agents  are  under  some  providential  control. 

I  shall  not  now  attempt  to  give  all  the  particulars  of 
our  retreat  to  the  Delaware;  suffice  for  the  present  to  say 
that  both  officers  and  men,  though  greatly  harassed  and 
fatigued,  without  rest,  covering,  or  provision,-  the  inevi- 
table consequences  of  a  long  retreat,  bore  it  with  a  manly 
and  martial  spirit.  All  their  wishes  centred  in  one,  which 
was,  that  the  country  would  turn  out  and  help  them  to 
drive  the  enemy  back.  Voltaire  has  remarked  that  King 
William  never  appeared  to  full  advantage  but  in  difficulties 
and  in  action;  the  same  remark  may  be  made  on  General 
Washington,  for  the  character  fits  him.  There  is  a  natu- 
ral firmness  in  some  minds  which  can  not  be  unlocked 
by  trifles,  but  which,  when  unlocked,  discovers  a  cabinet 
of  fortitude;  and  I  reckon  it  among  those  kind  of  public 
blessings  which  we  do  not  immediately  see  that  God  hath 
blessed  him  with  uninterrupted  health  and  given  him  a 
mind  that  can  even  flourish  upon  care. 

I  shall  conclude  this  paper  with  some  miscellaneous 
remarks  on  the  state  of  our  affairs;  and  shall  begin  with 
asking  the  following  question:  Why  is  it  that  the  enemy 
have  left  the  New  England  provinces  and  made  these 
middle  ones  the  seat  of  war?  The  answer  is  easy:  New 
England  is  not  infested  with  Tories,  and  we  are.  I  have 
been  tender  in  raising  the  cry  against  these  men,  and  used 
numberless  arguments  to  show  them  their  danger,  but 
it  will  not  do  to  sacrifice  a  world  either  to  their  folly  or 
their  baseness.  The  period  is  now  arrived  in  which  either 
they  or  we  must  change  our  sentiments,  or  one  or  both 
must  fall.  And  what  is  a  Tory?  Good  God!  what  is  he? 
I  should  not  be  afraid  to  go  with  a  hundred  Whigs  against 
a  thousand  Tories  were  they  to  attempt  to  get  into  arms. 
Every  Tory  is  a  coward;  for  servile,  slavish,  self-interested 
fear  is  the  foundation  of  Toryism;  and  a  man  under  such 
influence,  though  he  may  be  cruel,  never  can  be  brave. 


232 


PAINE 


But,  before  the  line  of  irrecoverable  separation  be 
drawn  between  us,  let  us  reason  the  matter  together:  your 
conduct  is  an  invitation  to  the  enemy,  yet  not  one  in  a 
thousand  of  you  has  heart  enough  to  join  him.  Howe  is 
as  much  deceived  by  you  as  the  American  cause  is  in- 
jured by  you.  He  expects  you  will  all  take  up  arms  and 
flock  to  his  standard,  with  muskets  on  your  shoulders. 
Your  opinions  are  of  no  use  to  him  unless  you  support 
him  personally,  for  'tis  soldiers,  and  not  Tories,  that  he 
wants. 

I  once  felt  all  that  kind  of  anger  which  a  man  ought 
to  feel  against  the  mean  principles  that  are  held  by  the 
Tories:  a  noted  one,  who  kept  a  tavern  at  Amboy,  was 
standing  at  his  door,  with  as  pretty  a  child  in  his  hand, 
about  eight  or  nine  years  old,  as  I  ever  saw,  and,  after 
speaking  his  mind  as  freely  as  he  thought  was  prudent, 
finished  with  this  unfatherly  expression,  "  Well,  give  me 
peace  in  my  day!  "  Not  a  man  lives  on  the  continent  but 
fully  believes  that  a  separation  must  some  time  or  other 
finally  take  place,  and  a  generous  parent  should  have  said, 
"  If  there  must  be  trouble,  let  it  be  in  my  day,  that  my 
child  may  have  peace";  and  this  single  reflection,  well 
applied,  is  sufficient  to  awaken  every  man  to  duty.  Not 
a  place  upon  earth  might  be  so  happy  as  America.  Her 
situation  is  remote  from  all  the  wrangling  world,  and  she 
has  nothing  to  do  but  to  trade  with  them.  A  man  can 
distinguish  himself  between  temper  and  principle,  and  I 
am  as  confident  as  I  am  that  God  governs  the  world  that 
America  will  never  be  happy  till  she  gets  clear  of  foreign 
dominion.  Wars,  without  ceasing,  will  break  out  till  that 
period  arrives,  and  the  continent  must  in  the  end  be  con- 
queror; for  though  the  flame  of  liberty  may  sometimes 
cease  to  shine,  the  coal  can  never  expire. 

America  did  not  nor  does  not  want  force,  but  she 
wanted  a  proper  application  of  that  force.  Wisdom  is  not 
the  purchase  of  a  day,  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  we  should 
err  at  the  first  setting  off.  From  an  excess  of  tenderness 
we  were  unwilling  to  raise  an  army,  and  trusted  our  cause 
to  the  temporary  defence  of  a  well-meaning  militia.  A 
summer's  experience  has  now  taught  us  better;  yet  with 
those  troops,  while  they  were  collected,  we  were  able  to 


THE   CRISIS  233 

set  bounds  to  the  progress  of  the  enemy,  and,  thank  God! 
they  are  again  assembling.  I  always  consider  militia  as 
the  best  troops  in  the  world  for  a  sudden  exertion,  but 
they  will  not  do  for  a  long  campaign.  Howe,  it  is  prob- 
able, will  make  an  attempt  on  this  city;  should  he  fail  on 
this  side  the  Delaware,  he  is  ruined:  if  he  succeeds,  our 
cause  is  not  ruined.  He  stakes  all  on  his  side  against  a 
part  on  ours;  admitting  he  succeeds,  the  consequence  will 
be  that  armies  from  both  ends  of  the  continent  will  march 
to  assist  their  suffering  friends  in  the  Middle  States;  for 
he  can  not  go  everywhere,  it  is  impossible.  I  consider 
Howe  the  greatest  enemy  the  Tories  have;  he  is  bringing 
a  war  into  their  country,  which,  had  it  not  been  for  him 
and  partly  for  themselves,  they  had  been  clear  of.  Should 
he  now  be  expelled,  I  wish,  with  all  the  devotion  of  a 
Christian,  that  the  names  of  Whig  and  Tory  may  never 
more  be  mentioned;  but  should  the  Tories  give  him  en- 
couragement to  come,  or  assistance  if  he  come,  I  as  sin- 
cerely wish  that  our  next  year's  arms  may  expel  them  from 
the  continent,  and  the  Congress  appropriate  their  posses- 
sions to  the  relief  of  those  who  have  suffered  in  well- 
doing. A  single  successful  battle  next  year  will  settle  the 
whole.  America  could  carry  on  a  two  years'  war  by  the 
confiscation  of  the  property  of  disaffected  persons,  and 
be  made  happy  by  their  expulsion.  Say  not  that  this  is 
revenge;  call  it  rather  the  soft  resentment  of  a  suffering 
people,  who,  having  no  object  in  view  but  the  good  of 
all,  have  staked  their  own  all  upon  a  seemingly  doubtful 
event.  Yet  it  is  folly  to  argue  against  determined  hard- 
ness; eloquence  may  strike  the  ear,  and  the  language  of 
sorrow  draw  forth  the  tear  of  compassion,  but  nothing 
can  reach  the  heart  that  is  steeled  with  prejudice. 

Quitting  this  class  of  men,  I  turn  with  the  warm 
ardour  of  a  friend  to  those  who  have  nobly  stood,  and  are 
yet  determined  to  stand  the  matter  out:  I  call  not  upon 
a  few,  but  upon  all:  not  on  this  State  or  that  State,  but 
on  every  State;  up  and  help  us;  lay  your  shoulders  to 
the  wheel;  better  have  too  much  force  than  too  little 
when  so  great  an  object  is  at  stake.  Let  it  be  told  to 
the  future  world  that  in  the  depth  of  winter,  when  noth- 
ing but  hope  and  virtue  could  survive,  the  city  and  the 


234  PAINE 

country,  alarmed  at  one  common  danger,  came  forth  to 
meet  and  to  repulse  it.  Say  not  that  thousands  are  gone, 
turn  out  your  tens  of  thousands;  throw  not  the  burden 
of  the  day  upon  Providence,  but  "  show  your  faith  by 
your  works,"  that  God  may  bless  you.  It  matters  not 
where  you  live  or  what  rank  of  life  you  hold,  the  evil  or 
the  blessing  will  reach  you  all.  The  far  and  the  near, 
the  home  counties  and  the  back,  the  rich  and  the  poor, 
will  suffer  or  rejoice  alike.  The  heart  that  feels  not  now 
is  dead:  the  blood  of  his  children  will  curse  his  cowardice 
who  shrinks  back  at  a  time  when  a  little  might  have  saved 
the  whole  and  made  them  happy.  I  love  the  man  that  can 
smile  at  trouble,  that  can  gather  strength  from  distress, 
and  grow  brave  by  reflection.  'Tis  the  business  of  little 
minds  to  shrink;  but  he  whose  heart  is  firm,  and  whose 
conscience  approves  his  conduct,  will  pursue  his  prin- 
ciples unto  death.  My  own  line  of  reasoning  is  to  myself 
as  straight  and  clear  as  a  ray  of  light.  Not  all  the  treas- 
ures of  the  world,  so  far  as  I  believe,  could  have  induced  me 
to  support  an  offensive  war,  for  I  think  it  murder;  but  if  a 
thief  breaks  into  my  house,  burns  and  destroys  my  prop- 
erty, and  kills  or  threatens  to  kill  me,  or  those  that  are 
in  it,  and  to  "  bind  me  in  all  cases  whatsoever  "  to  his 
absolute  will,  am  I  to  suffer  it?  What  signifies  it  to  me 
whether  he  who  does  it  is  a  king  or  a  common  man;  my 
countryman  or  not  my  countryman;  whether  it  be  done 
by  an  individual  villain  or  an  army  of  them?  If  we  reason 
to  the  root  of  things  we  shall  find  no  difference;  neither 
can  any  just  cause  be  assigned  why  we  should  punish  in 
the  one  case  and  pardon  in  the  other.  Let  them  call  me 
rebel  and  welcome:  I  feel  no  concern  from  it;  but  I  should 
suffer  the  misery  of  devils  were  I  to  make  a  whore  of  my 
soul  by  swearing  allegiance  to  one  whose  character  is 
that  of  a  sottish,  stupid,  stubborn,  worthless,  brutish  man. 
I  conceive  likewise  a  horrid  idea  in  receiving  mercy  from 
a  being  who  at  the  last  day  shall  be  shrieking  to  the  rocks 
and  mountains  to  cover  him,  and  fleeing  with  terror  from 
the  orphan,  the  widow,  and  the  slain  of  America. 

There  are  cases  which  can  not  be  overdone  by  lan- 
guage, and  this  is  one.  There  are  persons,  too,  who  see 
not  the  full  extent  of  the  evil  which  threatens  them;  they 


THE   CRISIS  235 

solace  themselves  with  hopes  that  the  enemy,  if  he  suc- 
ceed, will  be  merciful.  This  is  the  madness  of  folly,  to 
expect  mercy  from  those  who  have  refused  to  do  justice; 
and  even  mercy,  where  conquest  is  the  object,  is  only  a 
trick  of  war;  the  cunning  of  the  fox  is  as  murderous  as 
the  violence  of  the  wolf;  and  we  ought  to  guard  equally 
against  both.  Howe's  first  object  is,  partly  by  threats 
and  partly  by  promises,  to  terrify  or  seduce  the  people  to 
deliver  up  their  arms  and  to  receive  mercy.  The  ministry 
recommended  the  same  plan  to  Gage,  and  this  is  what 
the  Tories  call  making  their  peace — "  a  peace  which  pass- 
eth  all  understanding,"  indeed!  A  peace  which  would  be 
the  immediate  forerunner  of  a  worse  ruin  than  any  we 
have  yet  thought  of.  Ye  men  of  Pennsylvania,  do  reason 
upon  these  things!  Were  the  back  counties  to  give  up 
their  arms,  they  would  fall  an  easy  prey  to  the  Indians, 
wno  are  all  armed;  this,  perhaps,  is  what  some  Tories 
would  not  be  sorry  for.  Were  the  home  counties  to  de- 
liver up  their  arms,  they  would  be  exposed  to  the  resent- 
ment of  the  back  counties,  who  would  then  have  it  in  their 
power  to  chastise  their  defection  at  pleasure.  And  were 
any  one  State  to  give  up  its  arms,  that  State  must  be 
garrisoned  by  Howe's  army  of  Britons  and  Hessians  to 
preserve  it  from  the  anger  of  the  rest.  Mutual  fear  is  the 
principal  link  in  the  chain  of  mutual  love,  and  woe  be  to 
that  State  that  breaks  the  compact!  Howe  is  mercifully 
inviting  you  to  barbarous  destruction,  and  men  must  be 
either  rogues  or  fools  that  will  not  see  it.  I  dwell  not 
upon  the  powers  of  imagination;  I  bring  reason  to  your 
ears;  and  in  language  as  plain  as  A,  B,  C,  hold  up  truth 
to  your  eyes. 

I  thank  God  that  I  fear  not.  I  see  no  real  cause  for 
fear.  I  know  our  situation  well,  and  can  see  the  way  out 
of  it.  While  our  army  was  collected  Howe  dared  not 
risk  a  battle,  and  it  is  no  credit  to  him  that  he  decamped 
from  the  White  Plains  and  waited  a  mean  opportunity 
to  ravage  the  defenceless  Jerseys;  but  it  is  great  credit 
to  us  that,  with  a  handful  of  men,  we  sustained  an  orderly 
retreat  for  near  a  hundred  miles,  brought  off  our  ammu- 
nition, all  our  field-pieces,  the  greatest  part  of  our  stores, 
and  had  four  rivers  to  pass.  None  can  say  that  our  re- 


236 


PAINE 


treat  was  precipitate,  for  we  were  near  three  weeks  in  per- 
forming it,  that  the  country  might  have  time  to  come  in. 
Twice  we  marched  back  to  meet  the  enemy,  and  remained 
out  till  dark.  The  sign  of  fear  was  not  seen  in  our  camp, 
and  had  not  some  of  the  cowardly  and  disaffected  inhabit- 
ants spread  false  alarms  through  the  country  the  Jerseys 
had  never  been  ravaged.  Once  more  we  are  again  col- 
lected and  collecting;  our  new  army  at  both  ends  of  the 
continent  is  recruiting  fast,  and  we  shall  be  able  to  open 
the  next  campaign  with  sixty  thousand  men,  well  armed 
and  clothed.  This  is  our  situation,  and  who  will  may 
know  it.  By  perseverance  and  fortitude  we  have  the  pros- 
pect of  a  glorious  issue;  by  cowardice  and  submission,  the 
sad  choice  of  a  variety  of  evils — a  ravaged  country — a  de- 
populated city — habitations  without  safety,  and  slavery 
without  hope — our  homes  turned  into  barracks  and  bawdy 
houses  for  Hessians,  and  a  future  race  to  provide  for, 
whose  fathers  we  shall  doubt  of.  Look  on  this  picture 
and  weep  over  it;  and  if  there  yet  remains  one  thought- 
less wretch  who  believes  it  not,  let  him  suffer  it  unla- 
mented. 


THE 
PHILOSOPHY  OF  PROVERBS 


BY 

ISAAC   DISRAELI 


16 


ISAAC  DISRAELI  was  the  son  of  a  Jewish  merchant,  and  was  born  in 
Enfield,  England,  in  1766.  He  was  educated  in  a  school  near  his  native 
place,  and  then  at  Amsterdam,  and  deliberately  devoted  his  life  to  author- 
ship. He  married  in  1802,  and  had  a  daughter  and  four  sons,  the  eldest 
of  whom  was  Benjamin,  the  eminent  statesman,  who  became  Lord  Bea- 
consfield.  In  the  fifteenth  century  his  Jewish  ancestors  fled  to  Venice  to 
escape  the  Inquisition  in  Spain,  and  there  took  the  name  of  D'Israeli, 
"  that  their  race  might  be  forever  recognised."  But  in  1817  Isaac  re- 
nounced the  ancient  faith  and  had  all  his  children  baptized.  He  pub- 
lished seven  novels  and  two  volumes  of  poetry,  none  of  which  survive. 
He  was  an  omnivorous  reader  at  the  British  Museum,  and  found  his  true 
vocation  in  producing  a  mingled  compilation  and  essay  in  which  he  never 
has  been  approached.  His  "Curiosities  of  Literature,"  "  Calamities  of 
Authors,"  "  Quarrels  of  Authors,"  and  "Amenities  of  Literature,"  were 
published  at  various  dates  between  1791  and  1840;  all  have  been  through 
many  editions  and  found  recognition  as  standard  works,  into  which  every 
reader  likes  to  dip  occasionally.  He  also  published  "Commentaries  on 
the  Life  and  Reign  of  Charles  I,"  for  which  Oxford  gave  him  the  degree 
of  D.  C.  L.  He  was  blind  nine  years,  and  died  January  19,  1848. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS 

IN  antique  furniture  we  sometimes  discover  a  conven- 
ience which  long  disuse  had  made  us  unacquainted 
with,  and  are  surprised  by  the  aptness  which  we  did 
not  suspect  was  concealed  in  its  solid  forms.  We  have 
found  the  labour  of  the  workmen  to  have  been  as  ad- 
mirable as  the  material  itself,  which  is  still  resisting  the 
mouldering  touch  of  time  among  those  modern  inven- 
tions, elegant  and  unsubstantial,  which,  often  put  to- 
gether with  unseasoned  wood,  are  apt  to  warp  and  fly 
into  pieces  when  brought  into  use.  We  have  found  how 
strength  consists  in  the  selection  of  materials,  and  that, 
whenever  the  substitute  is  not  better  than  the  original, 
we  are  losing  something  in  that  test  of  experience  which 
all  things  derive  from  duration. 

Be  this  as  it  may!  I  shall  not  unreasonably  await  for 
the  artists  of  our  novelties  to  retrograde  into  massive 
greatness,  although  I  can  not  avoid  reminding  them  how 
often  they  revive  the  forgotten  things  of  past  times!  It 
is  well  known  that  many  of  our  novelties  were  in  use  by 
our  ancestors!  In  the  history  of  the  human  mind  there 
is,  indeed,  a  sort  of  antique  furniture  which  I  collect  not 
merely  for  their  antiquity,  but  for  the  sound  condition 
in  which  I  still  find  them,  and  the  compactness  which  they 
still  show.  Centuries  have  not  worm-eaten  their  solidity! 
and  the  utility  and  delightfulness  which  they  still  afford 
make  them  look  as  fresh  and  as  ingenious  as  any  of  our 
patent  inventions. 

By  the  title  of  the  present  article  the  reader  has  antici- 
pated the  nature  of  the  old  furniture  to  which  I  allude. 
I  propose  to  give  what,  in  the  style  of  our  times,  may  be 
called  the  "  Philosophy  of  Proverbs " — a  topic  which 
seems  virgin.  The  art  of  reading  proverbs  has  not,  in- 

239 


240  DISRAELI 

deed,  always  been  acquired  even  by  some  of  their  ad- 
mirers; but  my  observations,  like  their  subject,  must  be 
versatile  and  unconnected;  and  I  must  bespeak  indul- 
gence for  an  attempt  to  illustrate  a  very  curious  branch 
of  literature,  rather  not  understood  than  quite  forgotten. 

Proverbs  have  long  been  in  disuse.  "  A  man  of  fash- 
ion," observes  Lord  Chesterfield,  "  never  has  recourse  to 
proverbs  and  vulgar  aphorisms";  and,  since  the  time  his 
lordship  so  solemnly  interdicted  their  use,  they  appear  to 
have  withered  away  under  the  ban  of  his  anathema.  His 
lordship  was  little  conversant  with  the  history  of  proverbs, 
and  would  unquestionably  have  smiled  on  those  "  men 
of  fashion  "  of  another  stamp,  who,  in  the  days  of  Eliza- 
beth, James,  and  Charles,  were  great  collectors  of  them; 
would  appeal  to  them  in  their  conversations,  and  enforce 
them  in  their  learned  or  their  statesmanlike  correspond- 
ence. Few,  perhaps,  even  now  suspect  that  these  neg- 
lected fragments  of  wisdom,  which  exist  among  all  na- 
tions, still  offer  many  interesting  objects  for  the  studies 
of  the  philosopher  and  the  historian;  and  for  men  of  the 
world  still  open  an  extensive  school  of  human  life  and 
manners. 

The  home-spun  adages  and  the  rusty  "  sayed-saws  " 
which  remain  in  the  mouths  of  the  people  are  adapted  to 
their  capacities  and  their  humours.'  Easily  remembered, 
and  readily  applied,  these  are  the  philosophy  of  the  vul- 
gar, and  often  more  sound  than  that  of  their  masters! 
whoever  would  learn  what  the  people  think,  and  how  they 
feel,  must  not  reject  even  these  as  insignificant.  The 
proverbs  of  the  street  and  of  the  market,  true  to  Nature, 
and  lasting  only  because  they  are  true,  are  records  that 
the  populace  at  Athens  and  at  Rome  were  the  same  peo- 
ple as  at  Paris  and  at  London,  and  as  they  had  before 
been  in  the  city  of  Jerusalem! 

Proverbs  existed  before  books.  The  Spaniards  date 
the  origin  of  their  refranes  que  dicen  las  viejas  tras  el 
fuego,  "  sayings  of  old  wives  by  their  firesides,"  before 
the  existence  of  any  writings  in  their  language,  from  the 
circumstance  that  these  are  in  the  old  romance  or  rudest 
vulgar  idiom.  The  most  ancient  poem  in  the  "  Edda," 
"  the  sublime  speech  of  Odin,"  abounds  with  ancient 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS  241 

proverbs,  strikingly  descriptive  of  the  ancient  Scandina- 
vians. Undoubtedly  proverbs  in  the  earliest  ages  long 
served  as  the  unwritten  language  of  morality,  and  even 
of  the  useful  arts;  like  the  oral  traditions  of  the  Jews, 
they  floated  down  from  age  to  age  on  the  lips  of  succes- 
sive generations.  The  name  of  the  first  sage  who  sanc- 
tioned the  saying  would  in  time  be  forgotten,  while  the 
opinion,  the  metaphor,  or  the  expression  remained,  con- 
secrated into  a  proverb!  Such  was  the  origin  of  those 
memorable  sentences  by  which  men  learned  to  think  and 
to  speak  appositely;  they  were  precepts  which  no  man 
could  contradict,  at  a  time  when  authority  was  valued 
more  than  opinion,  and  experience  preferred  to  novelty. 
The  proverbs  of  a  father  became  the  inheritance  of  a  son; 
the  mistress  of  a  family  perpetuated  hers  through  her 
household  ;  the  workman  condensed  some  traditional 
secret  of  his  craft  into  a  proverbial  expression.  When 
countries  are  not  yet  populous,  and  property  has  not 
yet  produced  great  inequalities  in  its  ranks,  every  day 
will  show  them  how  "  the  drunkard  and  the  glutton 
come  to  poverty,  and  drowsiness  clothes  a  man  with 
rags."  At  such  a  period  he  who  gave  counsel  gave 
wealth. 

It  might,  therefore,  have  been  decided,  a  priori,  that 
the  most  homely  proverbs  would  abound  in  the  most 
ancient  writers — and  such  we  find  in  Hesiod;  a  poet 
whose  learning  was  not  drawn  from  books.  It  could  only 
have  been  in  the  agricultural  state  that  this  venerable 
bard  could  have  indicated  a  state  of  repose  by  this  rustic 
proverb : 

Ur)$<i\iov  p\v  v-rrtp  KOWVOV  Kara8c?o, 
"  Hang  your  plough-beam  o'er  the  hearth!  " 

The  envy  of  rival  workmen  is  as  justly  described  by  a 
reference  to  the  humble  manufacturers  of  earthenware  as 
by  the  elevated  jealousies  of  the  literati  and  the  artists  of 
a  more  polished  age.  The  famous  proverbial  verse  in 
Hesiod's  "  Works  and  Days/' 

Kol  Ktpafifbs  KepafJiti  Koreti, 

is  literally,  "  The  potter  is  hostile  to  the  potter!  " 

The  admonition  of  the  poet  to  his  brother,  to  prefer 


242  DISRAELI 

a  friendly  accommodation  to  a  litigious  lawsuit,  has  fixed 
a  paradoxical  proverb  often  applied: 

n\toy  J}/u<rv  ravrts, 
"  The  half  is  better  than  the  whole!  " 

In  the  progress  of  time  the  stock  of  popular  proverbs 
received  accessions  from  the  highest  sources  of  human 
intelligence;  as  the  philosophers  of  antiquity  formed  their 
collections,  they  increased  in  "  weight  and  number." 
Erasmus  has  pointed  out  some  of  these  sources,  in  the 
responses  of  oracles;  the  allegorical  symbols  of  Pythag- 
oras; the  verses  of  the  poets;  allusions  to  historical  inci- 
dents; mythology  and  apologue;  and  other  recondite  ori- 
gins. Such  dissimilar  matters,  coming  from  all  quarters, 
were  melted  down  into  this  vast  body  of  aphoristic  knowl- 
edge. Those  "  words  of  the  wise  and  their  dark  sayings," 
as  they  are  distinguished  in  that  large  collection  which 
bears  the  name  of  the  great  Hebrew  monarch,  at  length 
seem  to  have  required  commentaries;  for  what  else  can 
we  infer  of  the  enigmatic  wisdom  of  the  sages  when  the 
royal  parcemiographer  classes  among  their  studies  that 
of  "understanding  a  proverb  and  the  interpretation"? 
This  elevated  notion  of  "  the  dark  sayings  of  the  wise  " 
accords  with  the  bold  conjecture  of  their  origin  which 
the  Stagyrite  has  thrown  out,  who  considered  them  as 
the  wrecks  of  an  ancient  philosophy  which  had  been  lost 
to  mankind  by  the  fatal  revolutions  of  all  human  things, 
and  that  those  had  been  saved  from  the  general  ruin  by 
their  pithy  elegance  and  their  diminutive  form;  like  those 
marine  shells  found  on  the  tops  of  mountains,  the  relics  of 
the  Deluge!  Even  at  a  later  period  the  sage  of  Cheronea 
prized  them  among  the  most  solemn  mysteries;  and  Plu- 
tarch has  described  them  in  a  manner  which  proverbs  may 
even  still  merit:  "  Under  the  veil  of  these  curious  sentences 
are  hid  those  germs  of  morals  which  the  masters  of  philoso- 
phy have  afterward  developed  into  so  many  volumes." 

At  the  highest  period  of  Grecian  genius  the  tragic 
and  the  comic  poets  introduced  into  their  dramas  the 
proverbial  style.  St.  Paul  quotes  a  line  which  still  re- 
mains among  the  first  exercises  of  our  school  pens: 

"  Evil  communications  corrupt  good  manners." 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS 


243 


It  is  a  verse  found  in  a  fragment  of  Menander,  the  comic 

-  fyititu  Kcucai. 


As  this  verse  is  a  proverb,  and  the  apostle,  and  indeed 
the  highest  authority,  Jesus  himself,  consecrates  the  use 
of  proverbs  by  their  occasional  application,  it  is  uncertain 
whether  St.  Paul  quotes  the  Grecian  poet  or  only  repeats 
some  popular  adage.  Proverbs  were  bright  shafts  in  the 
Greek  and  Latin  quivers;  and  when  Bentley,  by  a  league 
of  superficial  wits,  was  accused  of  pedantry  ,for  his  use  of 
some  ancient  proverbs,  the  sturdy  critic  vindicated  his 
taste  by  showing  that  Cicero  constantly  introduced  Greek 
proverbs  into  his  writings  —  that  Scaliger  and  Erasmus 
loved  them,  and  had  formed  collections  drawn  from  the 
stores  of  antiquity. 

Some  difficulty  has  occurred  in  the  definition.  Prov- 
erbs must  be  distinguished  from  proverbial  phrases,  and 
from  sententious  maxims;  but  as  proverbs  have  many 
faces,  from  their  miscellaneous  nature,  the  class  itself 
scarcely  admits  of  any  definition.  When  Johnson  defined 
a  proverb  to  be  "  a  short  sentence  frequently  repeated  by 
the  people,"  this  definition  would  not  include  the  most 
curious  ones,  which  have  not  always  circulated  among  the 
populace,  nor  even  belong  to  them;  nor  does  it  designate 
the  vital  qualities  of  a  proverb.  "  The  pithy  quaintness 
of  old  Howell  has  admirably  described  the  ingredients  of 
an  exquisite  proverb  to  be  sense,  shortness,  and  salt.  A 
proverb  is  distinguished  from  a  maxim  or  an  apophthegm 
by  that  brevity  which  condenses  a  thought  or  a  metaphor, 
where  one  thing  is  said  and  another  is  to  be  applied.  This 
often  produces  wit,  and  that  quick  pungency  which  ex- 
cites surprise,  but  strikes  with  conviction;  this  gives  it 
an  epigrammatic  turn.  George  Herbert  entitled  the  small 
collection  which  he  formed  "  Jacula  Prudentium,"  Darts 
or  Javelins!  something  hurled  and  striking  deeply;  a  char- 
acteristic of  a  proverb  which  possibly  Herbert  may  have 
borrowed  from  a  remarkable  passage  in  Plato's  dialogue 
of  "  Protagoras  or  the  Sophists." 

The  influence  of  proverbs  over  the  minds  and  conver- 
sations of  a  whole  people  is  strikingly  illustrated  by  this 
philosopher's  explanation  of  the  term  "  to  laconize  "  —  the 


244  DISRAELI 

mode  of  speech  peculiar  to  the  Lacedaemonians.  This 
people  affected  to  appear  unlearned,  and  seemed  only 
emulous  to  excel  the  rest  of  the  Greeks  in  fortitude  and 
in  military  skill.  According  to  Plato's  notion,  this  was 
really  a  political  artifice,  with  a  view  to  conceal  their  pre- 
eminent wisdom.  With  the  jealousy  of  a  petty  state,  they 
attempted  to  confine  their  renowned  sagacity  within  them- 
selves, and  under  their  military  to  hide  their  contem- 
plative character!  The  philosopher  assures  those  who 
in  other  cities  imagined  they  laconized,  merely  by  imi- 
tating the  severe  exercises  and  the  other  warlike  manners 
of  the  Lacedaemonians,  that  they  were  grossly  deceived; 
and  thus  curiously  describes  the  sort  of  wisdom  which 
this  singular  people  practised: 

"  If  any  one  wish  to  converse  with  the  meanest  of  the 
Lacedaemonians,  he  will  at  first  find  him,  for  the  most 
part,  apparently  despicable  in  conversation;  but  after- 
ward, when  a  proper  opportunity  presents  itself,  this  same 
mean  person,  like  a  skilful  jaculator,  will  hurl  a  sentence, 
worthy  of  attention,  short  and  contorted;  so  that  he  who 
converses  with  him  will  appear  to  be  in  no  respect  supe- 
rior to  a  boy!  That  to  laconize,  therefore,  consists  much 
more  in  philosophizing  than  in  the  love  of  exercise,  is 
understood  by  some  of  the  present  age,  and  was  known 
to  the  ancients,  they  being  persuaded  that  the  ability 
of  uttering  such  sentences  as  these  is  the  province  of  a 
man  perfectly  learned.  The  seven  sages  were  emulators, 
lovers,  and  disciples  of  the  Lacedaemonian  erudition. 
Their  wisdom  was  a  thing  of  this  kind — viz.,  short  sen- 
tences uttered  by  each,  and  worthy  to  be  remembered. 
These  men,  assembling  together,  consecrated  to  Apollo 
the  first  fruits  of  their  wisdom;  writing  in  the  Temple  of 
Apollo,  at  Delphi,  those  sentences  which  are  celebrated 
by  all  men — viz.,  '  Know  thyself! '  and  '  Nothing  too 
much! '  But  on  what  account  do  I  mention  these  things? 
To  show  that  the  mode  of  philosophy  among  the  ancients 
was  a  certain  laconic  diction."  1 

The  "  laconisms  "  of  the  Lacedaemonians  evidently  par- 
took of  the  proverbial  style:  they  were,  no  doubt,  often 
proverbs  themselves.  The  very  instances  which  Plato  sup- 
plies of  this  "  laconizing  "  are  two  most  venerable  proverbs. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF   PROVERBS  245 

All  this  elevates  the  science  of  proverbs,  and  indicates 
that  these  abridgments  of  knowledge  convey  great  results, 
with  a  parsimony  of  words  prodigal  of  sense.  They  have, 
therefore,  preserved  many  "  a  short  sentence,  not  repeated 
by  the  people." 

It  is  evident,  however,  that  the  earliest  writings  of 
every  people  are  marked  by  their  most  homely  or  domes- 
tic proverbs,  for  these  were  more  directly  addressed  to 
their  wants.  Franklin,  who  may  be  considered  as  the 
founder  of  a  people  who  were  suddenly  placed  in  a  stage 
of  civil  society  which  as  yet  could  afford  no  literature, 
discovered  the  philosophical  cast  of  his  genius  when  he 
filled  his  almanacs  with  proverbs,  by  the  ingenious  con- 
trivance of  framing  them  into  a  connected  discourse,  de- 
livered by  an  old  man  attending  an  auction.  "  These 
proverbs,"  he  tells  us,  "  which  contained  the  wisdom  of 
many  ages  and  nations,  when  their  scattered  counsels 
were  brought  together,  made  a  great  impression.  They 
were  reprinted  in  Britain,  in  a  large  sheet  of  paper,  and 
stuck  up  in  houses:  and  were  twice  translated  in  France, 
and  distributed  among  their  poor  parishioners."  The  same 
occurrence  had  happened  with  us  ere  we  became  a  reading 
people.  Sir  Thomas  Elyot,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII, 
describing  the  ornaments  of  a  nobleman's  house,  among 
his  hangings,  and  plate,  and  pictures,  notices  the  engrav- 
ing of  proverbs  "  on  his  plate  and  vessels,  which  served 
the  guests  with  a  most  opportune  counsel  and  com- 
ments." Later  even  than  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  our  an- 
cestors had  proverbs  always  before  them,  on  everything 
that  had  room  for  a  piece  of  advice  on  it;  they  had  them 
painted  in  their  tapestries,  stamped  on  the  most  ordinary 
utensils,  on  the  blades  of  their  knives,2  the  borders  of  their 
plates,3  and  "  conned  them  out  of  goldsmiths'  rings." 
The  usurer,  in  Robert  Greene's  "  Groat's  Worth  of 
Wit,"  compressed  all  his  philosophy  into  the  circle  of 
his  ring,  having  learned  sufficient  Latin  to  understand 
the  proverbial  motto  of  "  Tu  tibi  cura!  "  The  husband 
was  reminded  of  his  lordly  authority  when  he  only  looked 
into  his  trencher,  one  of  its  learned  aphorisms  having 
descended  to  us: 

"  The  calmest  husbands  make  the  stormiest  wives." 


DISRAELI 

The  English  proverbs  of  the  populace,  most  of  which 
are  still  in  circulation,  were  collected  by  old  John  Hey- 
wood.8  They  are  arranged  by  Tusser  for  "  the  parlour — 
the  guest's  chamber — the  hall — table  lessons,"  etc.  Not 
a  small  portion  of  our  ancient  proverbs  were  adapted  to 
rural  life  when  our  ancestors  lived  more  than  ourselves 
amid  the  works  of  God  and  less  among  those  of  men.6 
At  this  time  one  of  our  old  statesmen,  in  commending  the 
art  of  compressing  a  tedious  discourse  into  a  few  signifi- 
cant phrases,  suggested  the  use  of  proverbs  in  diplomatic 
intercourse,  convinced  of  the  great  benefit  which  would 
result  to  the  negotiators  themselves,  as  well  as  to  others! 
I  give  a  literary  curiosity  of  this  kind.  A  member  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  made  a 
speech  entirely  composed  of  the  most  homely  proverbs. 
The  subject  was  a  bill  against  double  payments  of  book 
debts.  Knavish  tradesmen  were  then  in  the  habit  of 
swelling  out  their  book  debts  with  those  who  took 
credit,  particularly  to  their  younger  customers.  One 
of  the  members  who  began  to  speak  "  for  very  fear 
shook,"  and  stood  silent.  The  nervous  orator  was  fol- 
lowed by  a  blunt  and  true  representative  of  the  famed 
Governor  of  Barataria,  delivering  himself  thus:  "  It  is 
now  my  chance  to  speak  something,  and  that  without 
humming  or  hawing.  I  think  this  law  is  a  good  law. 
Even  reckoning  makes  long  friends.  As  far  goes  the 
penny  as  the  penny's  master.  Vigilantibus  non  dormi- 
entibus  jura  subveniunt — '  Pay  the  reckoning  overnight 
and  ye  shall  not  be  troubled  in  the  morning.'  If  ready 
money  be  mensura  publica,  let  every  one  cut  his  coat 
according  to  his  cloth.  When  his  old  suit  is  in  the 
wane,  let  him  stay  till  that  his  money  bring  a  new  suit 
in  the  increase."  7 

Another  instance  of  the  use  of  proverbs  among  our 
statesmen  occurs  in  a  manuscript  letter  of  Sir  Dudley 
Carlton,  written  in  1632,  on  the  impeachment  of  Lord 
Middlesex,  who,  he  says,  is  "  this  day  to  plead  his  own 
cause  in  the  exchequer  chamber,  about  an  account  of  four- 
score thousand  pounds  laid  to  his  charge.  How  his  lord- 
ship sped  I  know  not,  but  do  remember  well  the  French 
proverb,  Qui  mange  de  Toy  du  Roy  chiera  une  plume 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS  247 

quarante  ans  apres — '  Who  eats  of  the  king's  goose  will 
void  a  feather  forty  years  after! '  " 

This  was  the  era  of  proverbs  with  us;  for  then  they 
were  spoken  by  all  ranks  of  society.  The  free  use  of  trivial 
proverbs  got  them  into  disrepute;  and  as  the  abuse  of  a 
thing  raises  a  just  opposition  to  its  practice,  a  slender 
wit  affecting  "  a  cross  humour,"  published  a  little  volume 
of  "  Crossing  Proverbs,  Cross-answers,  and  Cross-hu- 
mours." He  pretends  to  contradict  the  most  popular 
ones,  but  he  has  not  always  the  genius  to  strike  at  amus- 
ing paradoxes.8 

Proverbs  were  long  the  favourites  of  our  neighbours; 
in  the  splendid  and  refined  court  of  Louis  XIV  they  gave 
rise  to  an  odd  invention.  They  plotted  comedies  and  even 
fantastical  ballets  from  their  subjects.  In  these  curiosi- 
ties of  literature  I  can  not  pass  by  such  eccentric  inven- 
tions unnoticed. 

A  comedy  of  proverbs  is  described  by  the  Duke  de  la 
Valliere,  which  was  performed  in  1634  with  prodigious 
success.  He  considers  that  this  comedy  ought  to  be 
ranked  among  farces;  but  it  is  gay,  well  written,  and  curi- 
ous for  containing  the  best  proverbs,  which  are  happily 
introduced  in  the  dialogue. 

A  more  extraordinary  attempt  was  a  ballet  of  proverbs. 
Before  the  opera  was  established  in  France  the  ancient  bal- 
lets formed  the  chief  amusement  of  the  court,  and  Louis 
XIV  himself  joined  with  the  performers.  The  singular 
attempt  of  forming  a  pantomimical  dance  out  of  proverbs 
is  quite  French;  we  have  a  "  ballet  des  proverbes,  danse  par 
le  Roi,  in  1654."  At  every  proverb  the  scene  changed,  and 
adapted  itself  to  the  subject.  I  shall  give  two  or  three  of  the 
entrees  that  we  may  form  some  notion  of  these  capriccios. 

The  proverb  was: 

Tel  menace  qui  a  grand  peur. 
"  He  threatens  who  is  afraid." 

The  scene  was  composed  of  swaggering  scaramouches  and 
some  honest  cits,  who  at  length  beat  them  off. 
At  another  entree  the  proverb  was: 

L'occasion  fait  le  larron. 
"  Opportunity  makes  the  thief." 


248 


DISRAELI 


Opportunity  was  acted  by  le  Sieur  Beaubrun,  but  it  is 
difficult  to  conceive  how  the  real  could  personify  the  ab- 
stract personage.  The  thieves  were  the  Duke  d'Amville 
and  Monsieur  de  la  Chesnaye. 

Another  entree  was  the  proverb  of: 

Ce  qui  vient  de  la  flute  s'en  va  au  tambour. 
"  What  comes  by  the  pipe  goes  by  the  tabor." 

A  loose,  dissipated  officer  was  performed  by  le  Sieur  1'An- 
glois,  the  Pipe  by  St.  Aignan,  and  the  Tabor  by  le  Sieur 
le  Comte!  In  this  manner  every  proverb  was  spoken  in 
action,  the  whole  connected  by  dialogue.  More  must 
have  depended  on  the  actors  than  the  poet.9 

The  French  long  retained  this  fondness  for  proverbs; 
for  they  still  have  dramatic  compositions  entitled  "  pro- 
verbes,"  on  a  more  refined  plan.  Their  invention  is  so 
recent  that  the  term  is  not  in  their  great  dictionary  of 
Trevoux.  These  "  proverbes  "  are  dramas  of  a  single  act, 
invented  by  Carmontel,  who  possessed  a  peculiar  vein  of 
humour,  but  who  designed  them  only  for  private  the- 
atricals. Each  proverb  furnished  a  subject  for  a  few 
scenes,  and  created  a  situation  powerfully  comic:  it  is  a 
dramatic  amusement  which  does  not  appear  to  have 
reached  us,  but  one  which  the  celebrated  Catharine  of 
Russia  delighted  to  compose  for  her  own  society. 

Among  the  middle  classes  of  society  to  this  day  we 
may  observe  that  certain  family  proverbs  are  traditionally 
preserved:  the  favourite  saying  of  a  father  is  repeated  by 
the  sons;  and  frequently  the  conduct  of  a  whole  genera- 
tion has  been  influenced  by  such  domestic  proverbs.  This 
may  be  perceived  in  many  of  the  mottoes  of  our  old 
nobility,  which  seem  to  have  originated  in  some  habitual 
proverb  of  the  founder  of  the  family.  In  ages  when 
'proverbs  were  most  prevalent,  such  pithy  sentences  would 
admirably  serve  in  the  ordinary  business  of  life,  and  lead 
on  to  decision,  even  in  its  greater  exigencies.  Orators, 
by  some  lucky  proverb,  without  wearying  their  auditors, 
would  bring  conviction  home  to  their  bosoms:  and  great 
characters  would  appeal  to  a  proverb,  or  deliver  that 
which  in  time  by  its  aptitude  became  one.  When  Nero 
was  reproached  for  the  ardour  with  which  he  gave  him- 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS  249 

self  up  to  the  study  of  music,  he  replied  to  his  censurers 
by  the  Greek  proverb,  "  An  artist  lives  everywhere."  The 
emperor  answered  in  the  spirit  of  Rousseau's  system,  that 
every  child  should  be  taught  some  trade.  When  Caesar, 
after  anxious  deliberation,  decided  on  the  passage  of  the 
Rubicon  (which  very  event  has  given  rise  to  a  proverb), 
rousing  himself  with  a  start  of  courage,  he  committed 
himself  to  Fortune  with  that  proverbial  expression  on  his 
lips  used  by  gamesters  in  desperate  play:  having  passed 
the  Rubicon,  he  exclaimed,  "The  die  is  cast!"  The  an- 
swer of  Paulus  ^milius  to  the  relations  of  his  wife,  who 
had  remonstrated  with  him  on  his  determination  to  sepa- 
rate himself  from  her  against  whom  no  fault  could  be 
alleged,  has  become  one  of  our  most  familiar  proverbs. 
This  hero  acknowledged  the  excellences  of  his  lady; 
but,  requesting  them  to  look  on  his  shoe,  which  appeared 
to  be  well  made,  he  observed,  "  None  of  you  know 
where  the  shoe  pinches!  "  He  either  used  a  proverbial 
phrase  or  by  its  aptness  it  has  become  one  of  the  most 
popular. 

There  are,  indeed,  proverbs  connected  with  the  char- 
acters of  eminent  men.  They  were  either  their  favourite 
ones  or  have  originated  with  themselves.  Such  a  collec- 
tion would  form  a  historical  curiosity.  To  the  celebrated 
Bayard  are  the  French  indebted  for  a  military  proverb, 
which  some  of  them  still  repeat,  "  Ce  que  le  gantelet 
gagne  le  gorgerin  le  mange  " — "  What  the  gauntlet  gets, 
the  gorget  consumes."  That  reflecting  soldier  well  cal- 
culated the  profits  of  a  military  life  which  consumes,  in 
the  pomp  and  waste  which  are  necessary  for  its  mainte- 
nance, the  slender  pay  it  receives,  and  even  what  its  rapaci- 
ty sometimes  acquires.  The  favourite  proverb  of  Eras- 
mus was  Festina  lente! — "  Hasten  slowly!  "  10  He  wished 
it  be  inscribed  wherever  it  could  meet  our  eyes,  on  public 
buildings,  and  on  our  rings  and  seals.  One  of  our  own 
statesmen  used  a  favourite  sentence,  which  has  enlarged 
our  stock  of  national  proverbs.  Sir  Amias  Pawlet,  when 
he  perceived  too  much  hurry  in  any  business,  was  accus- 
tomed to  say,  "  Stay  awhile,  to  make  an  end  the  sooner." 
Oliver  Cromwell's  coarse  but  descriptive  proverb  conveys 
the  contempt  he  felt  for  some  of  his  mean  and  troublesome 


DISRAELI 

coadjutors,  "Nits  will  be  lice!"  The  Italians  have  a 
proverb,  which  has  been  occasionally  applied  to  certain 
political  personages:  t 

Egli  e  quello  che  Dio  vuole; 
E  sara  quello  che  Dio  vorra! 
"  He  is  what  God  pleases; 
He  shall  be  what  God  wills!  " 

Ere  this  was  a  proverb  it  had  served  as  an  embroidered 
motto  on  the  mystical  mantle  of  Castruccio  Castracani. 
That  military  genius,  who  sought  to  revolutionize  Italy, 
and  aspired  to  its  sovereignty,  lived  long  enough  to  repent 
the  wild  romantic  ambition  which  provoked  all  Italy  to 
confederate  against  him;  the  mysterious  motto  he  as- 
sumed entered  into  the  proverbs  of  his  country!  The 
border  proverb  of  the  Douglases,  "  It  were  better  to  hear 
the  lark  sing  than  the  mouse  cheep,"  was  adopted  by 
every  border  chief  to  express,  as  Sir  Walter  Scott  ob- 
serves, what  the  great  Bruce  had  pointed  out,  that  the 
woods  and  hills  of  their  country  were  their  safest  bul- 
warks, instead  of  the  fortified  places  which  the  English 
surpassed  their  neighbours  in  the  arts  of  assaulting  or  de- 
fending. These  illustrations  indicate  one  of  the  sources 
of  proverbs;  they  have  often  resulted  from  the  spontane- 
ous emotions  or  the  profound  reflections  of  some  extraor- 
dinary individual,  whose  energetic  expression  was  caught 
by  a  faithful  ear,  never  to  perish! 

The  poets  have  been  very  busy  with  proverbs  in  all 
the  languages  of  Europe:  some  appear  to  have  been  the 
favourite  lines  of  some  ancient  poem :  even  in  more  refined 
times  many  of  the  pointed  verses  of  Boileau  and  Pope 
have  become  proverbial.  Many  trivial  and  laconic  prov- 
erbs bear  the  jingle  of  alliteration  or  rhyme,  which  as- 
sisted their  circulation,  and  were  probably  struck  off  ex- 
tempore; a  manner  which  Swift  practised,  who  was  a 
ready  coiner  of  such  rhyming  and  ludicrous  proverbs:  de- 
lighting to  startle  a  collector  by  his  facetious  or  sarcastic 
humour,  in  the  shape  of  an  "  old  saying  and  true."  Some 
of  these  rhyming  proverbs  are,  however,  terse  and  elegant : 
we  have — 

"  Little  strokes 
Fell  great  oaks." 


THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF   PROVERBS  251 

The  Italian — 

Chi  duo  lepri  caccia 
Uno  perde,  e  1'altro  lascia. 
"  Who  hunts  two  hares,  loses  one  and  leaves  the  other." 

The  haughty  Spaniard — 

El  dar  es  honor, 

Y  1  pedir  dolor. 

"  To  give  is  honour,  to  ask  is  grief." 

And  the  French — 

Ami  de  table 
Est  variable. 

"  The  friend  of  the  table 
Is  very  variable." 

The  composers  of  these  short  proverbs  were  a  numer- 
ous race  of  poets,  who  probably  among  the  dreams  of 
their  immortality  never  suspected  that  they  were  to  de- 
scend to  posterity,  themselves  and  their  works  unknown, 
while  their  extempore  thoughts  would  be  repeated  by 
their  own  nation. 

Proverbs  were  at  length  consigned  to  the  people  when 
books  were  addressed  to  scholars;  but  the  people  did  not 
find  themselves  so  destitute  of  practical  wisdom  by  pre- 
serving their  national  proverbs,  as  some  of  those  closet 
students  who  had  ceased  to  repeat  them.  The  various 
humours  of  mankind,  in  the  mutability  of  human  affairs, 
had  given  birth  to  every  species;  and  men  were  wise,  or 
merry,  or  satirical,  and  mourned  or  rejoiced  in  proverbs. 
Nations  held  a  universal  intercourse  of  proverbs,  from  the 
eastern  to  the  western  world;  for  we  discover  among 
those  which  appear  strictly  national,  many  which  are  com- 
mon to  them  all.  Of  our  own  familiar  ones  several  may 
be  tracked  among  the  snows  of  the  Latins  and  the 
Greeks,  and  have  sometimes  been  drawn  from  "  The  Mines 
of  the  East":  like  decayed  families  which  remain  in  ob- 
scurity, they  may  boast  of  a  high  lineal  descent  whenever 
they  recover  their  lost  title  deeds.  The  vulgar  proverb, 
"  To  carry  coals  to  Newcastle,"  local  and  idiomatic  as  it 
appears,  however,  has  been  borrowed  and  applied  by  our- 
selves; it  may  be  found  among  the  Persians:  in  the  "  Bus- 
tan  "  of  Sadi  we  have  Infers  piper  in  Hindostan — "  To 
carry  pepper  to  Hindostan";  among  the  Hebrews,  "To 


252 


DISRAELI 


carry  oil  to  the  City  of  Olives  " ;  a  similar  proverb  occurs 
in  Greek;  and  in  Galland's  "  Maxims  of  the  East  "  we 
may  discover  how  many  of  the  most  common  proverbs 
among  us,  as  well  as  some  of  Joe  Miller's  jests,  are  of 
Oriental  origin. 

The  resemblance  of  certain  proverbs  in  different  na- 
tions must,  however,  be  often  ascribed  to  the  identity  of 
human  nature;  similar  situations  and  similar  objects  have 
unquestionably  made  men  think  and  act  and  express  them- 
selves alike.  All  nations  are  parallels  of  each  other! 
Hence  all  paroemiographers,  or  collectors  of  proverbs, 
complain  of  the  difficulty  of  separating  their  own  national 
proverbs  from  those  which  have  crept  into  the  language 
from  others,  particularly  when  nations  have  held  much 
intercourse  together.  We  have  a  copious  collection  of 
Scottish  proverbs  by  Kelly;  but  this  learned  man  was 
mortified  at  discovering  that  many  which  he  had  long 
believed  to  have  been  genuine  Scottish  were  not  only 
English,  but  French,  Italian,  Spanish,  Latin,  and  Greek 
ones;  many  of  his  Scottish  proverbs  are  almost  literally 
expressed  among  the  fragments  of  remote  antiquity.  It 
would  have  surprised  him  further  had  he  been  aware  that 
his  Greek  originals  were  themselves  but  copies,  and  might 
have  been  found  in  D'Herbelot,  Erpenius,  and  Golius,  and 
in  many  Asiatic  works,  which  have  been  more  recently 
introduced  to  the  enlarged  knowledge  of  the  European 
student,  who  formerly  found  his  most  extended  researches 
limited  by  Hellenistic  lore. 

Perhaps  it  was  owing  to  an  accidental  circumstance 
that  the  proverbs  of  the  European  nations  have  been  pre- 
served in  the  permanent  form  of  volumes.  Erasmus  is 
usually  considered  as  the  first  modern  collector,  but  he 
appears  to  have  been  preceded  by  Polydore  Vergil,  who 
bitterly  reproaches  Erasmus  with  envy  and  plagiarism  for 
passing  by  his  collection  without  even  a  poor  compliment 
for  the  inventor!  Polydore  was  a  vain,  superficial  writer, 
who  prided  himself  in  leading  the  way  on  more  topics 
than  the  present.  Erasmus,  with  his  usual  pleasantry, 
provokingly  excuses  himself  by  acknowledging  that  he 
had  forgotten  his  friend's  book!  Few  sympathize  with  the 
quarrels  of  authors;  and  since  Erasmus  has  written  a  far 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS  253 

better  book  than  Polydore  Vergil's,  the  original  "  Ada- 
gia  "  is  left  only  to  be  commemorated  in  literary  history 
as  one  of  its  curiosities.11 

The  "Adagia"  of  Erasmus  contains  a  collection  of 
about  five  thousand  proverbs,  gradually  gathered  from  a 
constant  study  of  the  ancients.  Erasmus,  blessed  with  the 
genius  which  could  enliven  a  folio,  delighted  himself  and 
all  Europe  by  the  continued  accessions  he  made  to  a  vol- 
ume which  even  now  may  be  the  companion  of  literary 
men  for  a  winter  day's  fireside.  The  successful  example 
of  Erasmus  commanded  the  imitation  of  the  learned  in 
Europe,  and  drew  their  attention  to  their  own  national 
proverbs.  Some  of  the  most  learned  men,  and  some  not 
sufficiently  so,  were  now  occupied  in  this  new  study. 

In  Spain,  Fernandez  Nunez,  a  Greek  professor,  and  the 
Marquis  of  Santellana,  a  grandee,  published  collections  of 
their  "  Refranes,"  or  "  Proverbs,"  a  term  derived  a  refe- 
rendo,  because  it  is  often  repeated.  The  "  Refranes  o  Pro- 
verbios  Castellanos,"  par  Caesar  Oudin,  1624,  translated 
into  French,  is  a  valuable  compilation.  In  Cervantes  and 
Quevedo,  the  best  practical  illustrators,  they  are  sown 
with  no  sparing  hand.  There  is  an  ample  collection  of 
Italian  proverbs,  by  Florio,  who  was  an  Englishman,  of 
Italian  origin,  and  who  published  "  II  Giardino  di  Ricre- 
atione  "  at  London,  so  early  as  in  1591,  exceeding  six 
thousand  proverbs;  but  they  are  unexplained,  and  are 
often  obscure.  Another  Italian  in  England,  Torriano,  in 
1649,  published  an  interesting  collection  in  the  diminu- 
tive form  of  a  twenty-fours.  It  was  subsequent  to  these 
publications  in  England  that  in  Italy,  Angelus  Monozini, 
in  1604,  published  his  collection;  and  Julius  Varini,  in 
1642,  produced  his  "  Scuola  del  Vulgo."  In  France, 
Oudin,  after  others  had  preceded  him,  published  a  collec- 
tion of  French  proverbs,  under  the  title  of  "  Curiosites 
Franchises."  Fleury  de  Bellingen's  "  Explication  de  Pro- 
verbes  Frangois,"  on  comparing  it  with  "  Les  Illustres 
Proverbes  Historiques,"  a  subsequent  publication,  I  dis- 
covered to  be  the  same  work.  It  is  the  first  attempt  to 
render  the  study  of  proverbs  somewhat  amusing.  The 
plan  consists  of  a  dialogue  between  a  philosopher  and  a 
Sancho  Panqa,  who  blurts  out  his  proverbs  with  more  de- 


254 


DISRAELI 


light  than  understanding.  The  philosopher  takes  that  op- 
portunity of  explaining  them  by  the  events  in  which  they 
originated,  which,  however,  are  not  always  to  be  depended 
on.  A  work  of  high  merit  on  French  proverbs  is  the  un- 
finished one  of  the  Abbe  Tuet,  sensible  and  learned.  A 
collection  of  Danish  proverbs,  accompanied  by  a  French 
translation,  was  printed  at  Copenhagen,  in  a  quarto  vol- 
ume, 1761.  England  may  boast  of  no  inferior  paroemi- 
ographers.  The  grave  and  judicious  Camden,  the  reli- 
gious Herbert,  the  entertaining  Howell,  the  facetious 
Fuller,  and  the  laborious  Ray,  with  others,  have  pre- 
served our  national  sayings.  The  Scottish  have  been 
largely  collected  and  explained  by  the  learned  Kelly.  An 
excellent  anonymous  collection,  not  uncommon,  in  vari- 
ous languages,  1707;  the  collector  and  translator  was  Dr. 
J.  Mapletoft.  It  must  be  acknowledged  that,  although  no 
nation  exceeds  our  own  in  sterling  sense,  we  rarely  rival 
the  delicacy,  the  wit,  and  the  felicity  of  expression  of  the 
Spanish  and  the  Italian,  and  the  poignancy  of  some  of  the 
French  proverbs. 

The  interest  we  may  derive  from  the  study  of  proverbs 
is  not  confined  to  their  universal  truths,  nor  to  their 
poignant  pleasantry;  a  philosophical  mind  will  discover 
in  proverbs  a  great  variety  of  the  most  curious  knowl- 
edge. The  manners  of  a  people  are  painted  after  life  in 
their  domestic  proverbs;  and  it  would  not  be  advancing 
too  much  to  assert  that  the  genius  of  the  age  might  be 
often  detected  in  its  prevalent  ones.  The  learned  Selden 
tells  us  that  the  proverbs  of  several  nations  were  much 
studied  by  Bishop  Andrews:  the  reason  assigned  was,  be- 
cause "  by  them  he  knew  the  minds  of  several  nations, 
which,"  said  he,  "  is  a  brave  thing,  as  we  count  him  wise 
who  knows  the  minds  and  the  insides  of  men,  which  is 
done  by  knowing  what  is  habitual  to  them."  Lord  Bacon 
condensed  a  wide  circuit  of  philosophical  thought  when 
he  observed  that  "  the  genius,  wit,  and  spirit  of  a  nation 
are  discovered  by  their  proverbs." 

Proverbs  peculiarly  national,  while  they  convey  to  us 
the  modes  of  thinking,  will  consequently  indicate  the 
modes  of  acting  among  a  people.  The  Romans  had  a 
proverbial  expression  for  their  last  stake  in  play,  Rem 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS  255 

ad  triarios  venisse — "The  reserve  are  engaged!"  a  pro- 
verbial expression,  from  which  the  military  habits  of  the 
people  might  be  inferred;  the  triarii  being  their  reserve. 
A  proverb  has  preserved  a  curious  custom  of  ancient  cox- 
combry, which  originally  came  from  the  Greeks.  To  men 
of  effeminate  manners  in  their  dress  they  applied  the 
proverb  of  Unico  digitulo  scalpit  caput.  Scratching  the 
head  with  a  single  finger  was,  it  seems,  done  by  the  crit- 
ically nice  youths  in  Rome,  that  they  might  not  discom- 
pose the  economy  of  their  hair.  The  Arab,  whose  un- 
settled existence  makes  him  miserable  and  interested,  says, 
"  Vinegar  given  is  better  than  honey  bought."  Every- 
thing of  high  esteem  with  him  who  is  so  often  parched  in 
the  desert  is  described  as  milk — "  How  large  his  flow  of 
milk!"  is  a  proverbial  expression  with  the  Arab  to  dis- 
tinguish the  most  copious  eloquence.  To  express  a  state 
of  perfect  repose,  the  Arabian  proverb  is,  "  I  throw  the 
rein  over  my  back  ";  an  allusion  to  the  loosening  of  the 
cords  of  the  camels,  which  are  thrown  over  their  backs 
when  they  are  sent  to  pasture.  We  discover  the  rustic 
manners  of  our  ancient  Britons  in  the  Cambrian  proverbs; 
many  relate  to  the  hedge.  "  The  cleanly  Briton  is  seen 
in  the  hedge:  the  horse  looks  not  on  the  hedge  but  the 
corn:  the  bad  husband's  hedge  is  full  of  gaps."  The  state 
of  an  agricultural  people  appears  in  such  proverbs  as 
'  You  must  not  count  your  yearlings  till  May-day":  and 
their  proverbial  sentence  for  old  age  is,  "  An  old  man's 
end  is  to  keep  sheep!  "  Turn  from  the  vagrant  Arab  and 
the  agricultural  Briton  to  a  nation  existing  in  a  high 
state  of  artificial  civilization:  the  Chinese  proverbs  fre- 
quently allude  to  magnificent  buildings.  Affecting  a  more 
solemn  exterior  than  all  other  nations,  a  favourite  proverb 
with  them  is,  "  A  grave  and  majestic  outside  is,  as  it  were, 
the  palace  of  the  soul."  Their  notion  of  a  government 
is  quite  architectural.  They  say,  "  A  sovereign  may  be 
compared  to  a  hall;  his  officers  to  the  steps  that  lead  to 
it;  the  people  to  the  ground  on  which  they  stand."  What 
should  we  think  of  a  people  who  had  a  proverb  that  "  He 
who  gives  blows  is  a  master,  he  who  gives  none  is  a 
dog  "?  We  should  instantly  decide  on  the  mean  and  ser- 
vile spirit  of  those  who  could  repeat  it;  and  such  we  find 


356  DISRAELI 

to  have  been  that  of  the  Bengalese,  to  whom  the  degrad- 
ing proverb  belongs,  derived  from  the  treatment  they  were 
used  to  receive  from  their  Mogul  rulers,  who  answered 
the  claims  of  their  creditors  by  a  vigorous  application  of 
the  whip!  In  some  of  the  Hebrew  proverbs  we  are  struck 
by  the  frequent  allusions  of  that  fugitive  people  to  their 
own  history.  The  cruel  oppression  exercised  by  the  rul- 
ing power,  and  the  confidence  in  their  hope  of  change 
in  the  day  of  retribution,  was  delivered  in  this  Hebrew 
proverb,  "  When  the  tale  of  bricks  is  doubled,  Moses 
comes!  "  The  fond  idolatry  of  their  devotion  to  their 
ceremonial  law,  and  to  everything  connected  with  their 
sublime  theocracy,  in  their  magnificent  temple,  is  finely 
expressed  by  this  proverb,  "  None  ever  took  a  stone  out 
of  the  temple  but  the  dust  did  fly  into  his  eyes."  The 
Hebrew  proverb  that  "  A  fast  for  a  dream  is  as  fire  for 
stubble,"  which  it  kindles,  could  only  have  been  invented 
by  a  people  whose  superstitions  attached  a  holy  mystery 
to  fasts  and  dreams.  They  imagined  that  a  religious  fast 
was  propitious  to  a  religious  dream;  or  to  obtain  the  in- 
terpretation of  one  which  had  troubled  their  imagination. 
Peyssonel,  who  long  resided  among  the  Turks,  observes 
that  their  proverbs  are  full  of  sense,  ingenuity,  and  ele- 
gance, the  surest  test  of  the  intellectual  abilities  of  any 
nation.  He  said  this  to  correct  the  volatile  opinion  of  De 
Tott,  who,  to  convey  an  idea  of  their  stupid  pride,  quotes 
one  of  their  favourite  adages,  of  which  the  truth  and  can- 
dour are  admirable,  "  Riches  in  the  Indies,  wit  in  Europe, 
and  pomp  among  the  Ottomans." 

The  Spaniards  may  appeal  to  their  proverbs  to  show 
that  they  were  a  high-minded  and  independent  race.  A 
Whiggish  jealousy  of  the  monarchical  power  stamped 
itself  on  this  ancient  one,  Va  el  rey  hasta  do  peude,  y  no 
hasta  do  quiere — "  The  king  goes  as  far  as  he  is  able,  not 
as  far  as  he  desires."  It  must  have  been  at  a  later  period, 
when  the  national  genius  became  more  subdued,  and  every 
Spaniard  dreaded  to  find  under  his  own  roof  a  spy  or  an 
informer,  that  another  proverb  arose,  Con  el  rey  y  la  in- 
quisition, chiton! — "With  the  king  and  the  Inquisition, 
hush!"  The  gravity  and  taciturnity  of  the  nation  have 
been  ascribed  to  the  effects  of  this  proverb.  Their  popu- 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS 


257 


lar  but  suppressed  feelings  on  taxation,  and  on  a  variety 
of  dues  exacted  by  their  clergy,  were  murmured  in  prov- 
erbs. Lo  que  no  lleva  Christo  lleva  el  fisco! — "What 
Christ  takes  not,  the  exchequer  carries  away!"  They 
have  a  number  of  sarcastic  proverbs  on  the  tenacious  gripe 
of  the  "  abad  avariento,"  the  avaricious  priest,  who,  "  hav- 
ing eaten  the  olio  offered,  claims  the  dish!"  A  striking 
mixture  of  chivalric  habits,  domestic  decency,  and  epi- 
curean comfort,  appears  in  the  Spanish  proverb,  La  muger 
y  la  salsa  a  la  mano  de  la  lanc^a — "  The  wife  and  the  sauce 
by  the  hand  of  the  lance";  to  honour  the  dame,  and  to 
have  the  sauce  near. 

The  Italian  proverbs  have  taken  a  tinge  from  their 
deep  and  politic  genius,  and  their  wisdom  seems  wholly 
concentrated  in  their  personal  interests.  I  think  every 
tenth  proverb  in  an  Italian  collection  is  some  cynical  or 
some  selfish  maxim:  a  book  of  the  world  for  worldlings! 
The  Venetian  proverb,  Pria  Veneziana,  poi  Christiane — 
"First  Venetian,  and  then  Christian!"  condenses  the 
whole  spirit  of  their  ancient  republic  into  the  smallest 
space  possible.  Their  political  proverbs  no  doubt  arose 
from  the  extraordinary  state  of  a  people  sometimes  dis- 
tracted among  republics,  and  sometimes  servile  in  petty 
courts.  The  Italian  says,  I  popoli  s'ammazzano,  ed  i  prin- 
cipi  s'abbracciano — "  The  people  murder  one  another,  and 
princes  embrace  one  another."  Chi  prattica  co'  grandi, 
1'ultimo  a  tavola,  e'l  primo  a  strapazzi — "  Who  dangles 
after  the  great  is  the  last  at  table  and  the  first  at  blows." 
Chi  non  sa  adulare,  non  sa  regnare — "  Who  knows  not  to 
flatter,  knows  not  to  reign."  Chi  serve  in  corte  muore 
sul'  pagliato — "  Who  serves  at  court  dies  on  straw." 
Wary  cunning  in  domestic  life  is  perpetually  impressed. 
An  Italian  proverb,  which  is  immortalized  in  our  lan- 
guage, for  it  enters  into  the  history  of  Milton,  was  that 
by  which  the  elegant  Wotton  counselled  the  young  poetic 
traveller  to  have,  II  viso  sciolto,  ed  i  pensieri  stretti — "  An 
open  countenance,  but  close  thoughts."  In  the  same 
spirit,  Chi  parla  semina,  chi  tace  raccoglie — "  The  talker 
sows,  the  silent  reaps";  as  well  as,  Fatti  di  miele,  e  ti 
mangieran  le  mosche — "  Make  yourself  all  honey,  and  the 
flies  will  devour  you."  There  are  some  which  display  a 


DISRAELI 

deep  knowledge  of  human  nature:  A  Lucca  ti  vidi,  a  Pisa 
ti  connobbi! — "  I  saw  you  at  Lucca,  I  knew  you  at  Pisa!  " 
Guardati  d'aceto  di  vin  dolce — "  Beware  of  vinegar  made 
of  sweet  wine  ";  provoke  not  the  rage  of  a  patient  man! 

Among  a  people  who  had  often  witnessed  their  fine 
country  devastated  by  petty  warfare,  their  notion  of  the 
military  character  was  not  usually  heroic.  II  soldato  per 
far  male  e  ben  pagato — "  The  soldier  is  well  paid  for  doing 
mischief."  Soldato,  acqua,  e  fuoco,  presto  si  fan  luoco— 
"  A  soldier,  fire,  and  water  soon  make  room  for  them- 
selves." But  in  a  poetical  people,  endowed  with  great 
sensibility,  their  proverbs  would  sometimes  be  tender  and 
fanciful.  They  paint  the  activity  of  friendship,  Chi  ha 
Tamor  nel  petto,  ha  lo  sprone  a  i  fianchi — "  Who  feels  love 
in  the  breast  feels  a  spur  in  his  limbs":  or  its  generous 
passion,  Gli  amici  legono  la  borsa  con  un  filo  di  ragnatelo 
— "  Friends  tie  their  purse  with  a  cobweb's  thread."  They 
characterized  the  universal  lover  by  an  elegant  proverb, 
Appicare  il  Maio  ad  ogn'  uscio — "  To  hang  every  door 
with  May";  alluding  to  the  bough  which  in  the  nights 
of  May  the  country  people  are  accustomed  to  plant  before 
the  door  of  their  mistress.  If  we  turn  to  the  French,  we 
discover  that  the  military  genius  of  France  dictated  the 
proverb  Maille  a  maille  se  fait  le  haubergeon — "  Link  by 
link  is  made  the  coat  of  mail  ";  and,  Tel  coup  de  langue 
est  pire  qu'un  coup  de  lance — "  The  tongue  strikes  deeper 
than  the  lance";  and  Ce  qui  vient  du  tambour  s'en  re- 
tourne  a  la  flute — "  What  comes  by  the  tabor  goes  back 
with  the  pipe."  Point  d'argent  point  de  Suisse  has  be- 
come proverbial,  observes  an  Edinburgh  reviewer;  a  strik- 
ing expression,  which,  while  French  or  Austrian  gold 
predominated,  was  justly  used  to  characterize  the  illiberal 
and  selfish  policy  of  the  cantonal  and  federal  governments 
of  Switzerland  when  it  began  to  degenerate  from  its  moral 
patriotism.  The  ancient,  perhaps  the  extinct,  spirit  of 
Englishmen  was  once  expressed  by  our  proverb,  "  Better 
be  the  head  of  a  dog  than  the  tail  of  a  lion  " — i.  e.,  the 
first  of  the  yeomanry  rather  than  the  last  of  the  gentry. 
A  foreign  philosopher  might  have  discovered  our  own 
ancient  skill  in  archery  among  our  proverbs;  for  none  but 
true  toxophilites  could  have  had  such  a  proverb  as  "  I 


THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF  PROVERBS 

will  either  make  a  shaft  or  a  bolt  of  it!  "  signifying,  says 
the  author  of  "  Ivanhoe,"  a  determination  to  make  one 
use  or  other  of  the  thing  spoken  of:  the  bolt  was  the 
arrow  peculiarly  fitted  to  the  cross-bow,  as  that  of  the 
long-bow  was  called  a  shaft.  These  instances  sufficiently 
demonstrate  that  the  characteristic  circumstances  and  feel- 
ings of  a  people  are  discovered  in  their  popular  notions, 
and  stamped  on  their  familiar  proverbs. 

It  is  also  evident  that  the  peculiar  and  often  idiomatic 
humour  of  a  people  is  best  preserved  in  their  proverbs. 
There  is  a  shrewdness,  although  deficient  in  delicacy,  in 
the  Scottish  proverbs;  they  are  idiomatic,  facetious,  and 
strike  home.  Kelly,  who  has  collected  three  thousand,  in- 
forms us  that,  in  1725,  the  Scotch  were  a  great  proverbial 
nation;  for  that  few  among  the  better  sort  will  converse 
any  considerable  time,  but  will  confirm  every  assertion 
and  observation  with  a  Scottish  proverb.  The  speculative 
Scotch  of  our  own  times  have  probably  degenerated  in 
prudential  lore,  and  deem  themselves  much  wiser  than 
their  proverbs.  They  may  reply  by  a  Scotch  proverb 
on  proverbs,  made  by  a  great  man  in  Scotland,  who,  hav- 
ing given  a  splendid  entertainment,  was  harshly  told  that 
"  Fools  make  feasts,  and  wise  men  eat  them";  but  he 
readily  answered,  "  Wise  men  make  proverbs,  and  fools 
repeat  them!  " 

National  humour,  frequently  local  and  idomatical,  de- 
pends on  the  artificial  habits  of  mankind,  so  opposite  to 
each  other;  but  there  is  a  natural  vein,  which  the  popu- 
lace, always  true  to  nature,  preserve,  even  among  the 
gravest  people.  The  Arabian  proverb,  "  The  barber  learns 
his  art  on  the  orphan's  face  ";  the  Chinese,  "  In  a  field  of 
melons  do  not  pull  up  your  shoe;  under  a  plum  tree  do 
not  adjust  your  cap  " — to  impress  caution  in  our  conduct 
under  circumstances  of  suspicion — and  the  Hebrew  one, 
"  He  that  hath  had  one  of  his  family  hanged  may  not  say 
to  his  neighbour,  Hang  up  this  fish!  "  are  all  instances  of 
this  sort  of  humour.  The  Spaniards  are  a  grave  people, 
but  no  nation  has  equalled  them  in  their  peculiar  humour. 
The  genius  of  Cervantes  partook  largely  of  that  of  his 
country;  that  mantle  of  gravity,  which  almost  conceals  its 
latent  facetiousness,  and  with  which  he  has  imbued  his 


DISRAELI 

style  and  manner  with  such  untranslatable  idiomatic  raci- 
ness,  may  be  traced  to  the  proverbial  erudition  of  his  na- 
tion. "  To  steal  a  sheep,  and  give  away  the  trotters  for 
God's  sake!  "  is  Cervantic  nature.  To  one  who  is  seeking 
an  opportunity  to  quarrel  with  another,  their  proverb 
runs,  Si  quieres  dar  palos  a  sur  muger  pidele  al  sol  a  bever 
— "  Hast  thou  a  mind  to  quarrel  with  thy  wife,  bid  her 
bring  water  to  thee  in  the  sunshine!  " — a  very  fair  quarrel 
may  be  picked  up  about  the  motes  in  the  clearest  water! 
On  the  judges  in  Galicia,  who,  like  our  former  justices  of 
peace,  "  for  half  a  dozen  chickens  would  dispense  with  a 
dozen  of  penal  statutes,"  A  juezes  Galicianos,  con  los  pies 
en  las  manos — "  To  the  judges  of  Galicia  go  with  feet  in 
hand";  a  droll  allusion  to  a  present  of  poultry,  usually 
held  by  the  legs.  To  describe  persons  who  live  high  with- 
out visible  means,  Los  que  cabritos  venden,  y  cabras  no 
tienen,  de  donde  los  vienen? — "  They  that  sell  kids,  and 
have  no  goats,  how  came  they  by  them?  "  El  vino  no  trae 
bragas — "  Wine  wears  no  breeches  ";  for  men  in  wine  ex- 
pose their  most  secret  thoughts.  Vino  di  un  oreja — 
"Wine  of  one  ear!"  is  good  wine;  for  at  bad,  shaking 
our  heads,  both  our  ears  are  visible;  but  at  good  the 
Spaniard,  by  a  natural  gesticulation  lowering  on  one  side, 
shows  a  single  ear. 

Proverbs  abounding  in  sarcastic  humour,  and  found 
among  every  people,  are  those  which  are  pointed  at  rival 
countries.  Among  ourselves,  hardly  a  county  escaped 
from  some  popular  quip;  even  neighbouring  towns  have 
their  sarcasms,  usually  pickled  in  some  unlucky  rhyme. 
The  egotism  of  man  eagerly  seizes  on  whatever  serves  to 
depreciate  or  to  ridicule  his  neighbour:  nations  proverb 
each  other  ;  counties  flout  counties  ;  obscure  towns 
sharpen  their  wits  on  towns  as  obscure  as  themselves — 
the  same  evil  principle  lurking  in  poor  human  nature,  if 
it  can  not  always  assume  predominance,  will  meanly  gratify 
itself  by  insult  or  contempt.  They  expose  some  preva- 
lent folly,  or  allude  to  some  disgrace  which  the  natives 
have  incurred.  In  France  the  Burgundians  have  a  prov- 
erb, Mieux  vaut  bon  repas  que  bel  habit — "  Better  a  good 
dinner  than  a  fine  coat."  These  good  people  are  great 
gormandizers,  but  shabby  dressers;  they  are  commonly 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS  26l 

said  to  have  "  bowels  of  silk  and  velvet  " — this  is,  all  their 
silk  and  velvet  goes  for  their  bowels!  Thus  Picardy  is 
famous  for  "  hot  heads  ";  and  the  Norman  for  son  dit  et 
son  dedit,  "  his  saying  and  his  unsaying!  "  In  Italy  the 
numerous  rival  cities  pelt  one  another  with  proverbs: 
Chi  ha  a  fare  con  Tosco  non  convien  esser  losco — "  He 
who  deals  with  a  Tuscan  must  not  have  his  eyes  shut." 
A  Venetia  chi  vi  nasce  mal  vi  si  pasce — "  Whom  Venice 
breeds,  she  poorly  feeds." 

There  is  another  source  of  national  characteristics,  fre- 
quently producing  strange  or  whimsical  combinations;  a 
people,  from  a  very  natural  circumstance,  have  drawn 
their  proverbs  from  local  objects,  or  from  allusions  to  pe- 
culiar customs.  The  influence  of  manners  and  customs 
over  the  ideas  and  language  of  a  people  would  form  a  sub- 
ject of  extensive  and  curious  research.  There  is  a  Japan- 
ese proverb  that  "  A  fog  can  not  be  dispelled  with  a  fan!  " 
Had  we  not  known  the  origin  of  this  proverb,  it  would  be 
evident  that  it  could  only  have  occurred  to  a  people  who 
had  constantly  before  them  fogs  and  fans;  and  the  fact 
appears  that  fogs  are  frequent  on  the  coast  of  Japan,  and 
that  from  the  age  of  five  years  both  sexes  of  the  Japanese 
carry  fans.  The  Spaniards  have  an  odd  proverb  to  de- 
scribe those  who  tease  and  vex  a  person  before  they  do 
him  the  very  benefit  which  they  are  about  to  confer — 
acting  kindly,  but  speaking  roughly,  Mostrar  primero  la 
horca  que  le  lugar — "  To  show  the  gallows  before  they 
show  the  town  ";  a  circumstance  alluding  to  their  small 
towns,  which  have  a  gallows  placed  on  an  eminence,  so 
that  the  gallows  breaks  on  the  eye  of  the  traveller  before 
he  gets  a  view  of  the  town  itself. 

The  Cheshire  proverb  on  marriage,  "  Better  wed  over 
the  mixon  than  over  the  moor  " — that  is,  at  home  or  in 
its  vicinity;  mixon  alludes  to  the  dung,  etc.,  in  the  farm- 
yard, while  the  road  from  Chester  to  London  is%  over  the 
moorland  in  Staffordshire:  this  local  proverb  is  a  curious 
instance  of  provincial  pride,  perhaps  of  wisdom,  to  induce 
the  gentry  of  that  county  to  form  intermarriages;  to  pro- 
long their  own  ancient  families,  and  perpetuate  ancient 
friendships  between  them. 

In  the  Isle  of  Man  a  proverbial  expression  forcibly 
17 


DISRAELI 

indicates  the  object  constantly  occupying  the  minds  of  the 
inhabitants.  The  two  deemsters  or  judges,  when  ap- 
pointed to  the  chair  of  judgment,  declare  they  will  render 
justice  between  man  and  man  "  as  equally  as  the  herring- 
bone lies  between  the  two  sides  ":  an  image  which  could 
not  have  occurred  to  any  people  unaccustomed  to  the 
herring  fishery.  There  is  a  Cornish  proverb,  "  Those  who 
will  not  be  ruled  by  the  rudder  must  be  ruled  by  the 
rock  " — the  strands  of  Cornwall,  so  often  covered  with 
wrecks,  could  not  fail  to  impress  on  the  imaginations  of 
its  inhabitants  the  two  objects  from  whence  they  drew 
this  salutary  proverb  against  obstinate  wrongheads. 

When  Scotland,  in  the  last  century,  felt  its  allegiance 
to  England  doubtful,  and  when  the  French  sent  an  expe- 
dition to  the  Land  of  Cakes,  a  local  proverb  was  revived, 
to  show  the  identity  of  interests  which  affected  both 

nations: 

"  If  Skiddaw  hath  a  cap, 
Scruffel  wots  full  well  of  that." 

These  are  two  high  hills,  one  in  Scotland  and  one  in  Eng- 
land; so  near  that  what  happens  to  the  one  will  not  be 
long  ere  it  reach  the  other.  If  a  fog  lodges  on  the  one, 
it  is  sure  to  rain  on  the  other;  the  mutual  sympathies  of 
the  two  countries  were  hence  deduced  in  a  copious  dis- 
sertation, by  Oswald  Dyke,  on  what  was  called  "  The 
Union-proverb,"  which  local  proverbs  of  our  country 
Fuller  has  interspersed  in  his  "  Worthies,"  and  Ray  and 
Grose  have  collected  separately. 

I  was  amused  lately  by  a  curious  financial  revelation 
which  I  found  in  an  opposition  paper,  where  it  appears 
that  "  ministers  pretend  to  make  their  load  of  taxes  more 
portable  by  shifting  the  burden  or  altering  the  pressure, 
without,  however,  diminishing  the  weight;  according  to 
the  Italian  proverb,  Accommodare  le  bisaccie  nella  strada 
— *  To  fit,  the  load  on  the  journey  '  ";  it  is  taken  from  a 
custom  of  the  mule-drivers,  who,  placing  their  packages 
at  first  but  awkwardly  on  the  backs  of  their  poor  beasts, 
and  seeing  them  ready  to  sink,  cry  out:  "  Never  mind! 
we  must  fit  them  better  on  the  road!"  I  was  gratified 
to  discover,  by  the  present  and  some  other  modern  in- 
stances, that  the  taste  for  proverbs  was  reviving,  and  that 


THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF    PROVERBS  263 


we  were  returning  to  those  sober  times  when  the  aptitude 
of  a  simple  proverb  would  be  preferred  to  the  verbosity  of 
politicians,  Tories,  Whigs,  or  Radicals! 

There  are  domestic  proverbs  which  originate  in  inci- 
dents known  only  to  the  natives  of  their  province.  Ital- 
ian literature  is  particularly  rich  in  these  stores.  The 
lively  proverbial  taste  of  that  vivacious  people  was  trans- 
ferred to  their  own  authors;  and  when  these  allusions  were 
obscured  by  time,  learned  Italians,  in  their  zeal  for  their 
national  literature,  and  in  their  national  love  of  story-tell- 
ing, have  written  grave  commentaries  even  on  ludicrous 
but  popular  tales,  in  which  the  proverbs  are  said  to  have 
originated.  They  resemble  the  old  facetious  contes,  whose 
simplicity  and  humour  still  live  in  the  pages  of  Boccaccio, 
and  are  not  forgotten  in  those  of  the  Queen  of  Navarre. 

The  Italians  apply  a  proverb  to  a  person  who,  while 
he  is  beaten,  takes  the  blows  quietly: 

Per  beato  ch'  elle  non  furon  pesche! 
"  Luckily  they  were  not  peaches!  " 

And  to  threaten  to  give  a  man — 

Una  pesca  in  un  occhio, 
"  A  peach  in  the  eye," 

means  to  give  him  a  thrashing.  This  proverb,  it  is  said, 
originated  in  the  close  of  a  certain  droll  adventure.  The 
community  of  the  Castle  Poggibonsi,  probably  from  some 
jocular  tenure  observed  on  St.  Bernard's  day,  pay  a  tribute 
of  peaches  to  the  court  of  Tuscany,  which  are  usually  shared 
among  the  ladies  in  waiting  and  the  pages  of  the  court. 
It  happened  one  season,  in  a  great  scarcity  of  peaches,  that 
the  good  people  of  Poggibonsi,  finding  them  rather  dear, 
sent,  instead  of  the  customary  tribute,  a  quantity  of  fine 
juicy  figs,  which  was  so  much  disapproved  of  by  the  pages 
that  as  soon  as  they  got  hold  of  them  they  began  in  rage  to 
empty  the  baskets  on  the  heads  of  the  ambassadors  of  the 
Poggibonsi,  who,  in  attempting  to  fly  as  well  as  they  could 
from  the  pulpy  shower,  half  blinded,  and  recollecting  that 
peaches  would  have  had  stones  in  them,  cried  out: 

Per  beato  ch'  elle  non  furon  pesche! 
"  Luckily  they  were  not  peaches !  " 


264 


DISRAELI 


Fare  le  scalee  di  Sant'  Ambrogio — "  To  mount  the 
stairs  of  Saint  Ambrose,"  a  proverb  allusive  to  the  busi- 
ness of  the  school  of  scandal.  Varchi  explains  it  by  a  cir- 
cumstance so  common  in  provincial  cities.  On  summer 
evenings,  for  fresh  air  and  gossip,  the  loungers  met  on  the 
steps  and  landing  places  of  the  Church  of  St.  Ambrose: 
whoever  left  the  party,  "  they  read  in  his  book,"  as  our 
commentator  expresses  it;  and  not  a  leaf  was  passed  over! 
All  liked  to  join  a  party  so  well  informed  of  one  another's 
concerns,  and  every  one  tried  to  be  the  very  last  to  quit  it 
—not  "  to  leave  his  character  behind!  "  It  became  a  pro- 
verbial phrase  with  those  who  left  a  company,  and  were 
too  tender  of  their  backs,  to  request  they  would  not 
"  mount  the  stairs  of  St.  Ambrose."  Jonson  has  well  de- 
scribed such  a  company: 

"  You  are  so  truly  feared,  but  not  beloved 
One  of  another,  as  no  one  dares  break 
Company  from  the  rest,  lest  they  should  fall 
Upon  him  absent." 

There  are  legends  and  histories  which  belong  to  prov- 
erbs; and  some  of  the  most  ancient  refer  to  incidents 
which  have  not  always  been  commemorated.  Two  Greek 
proverbs  have  accidentally  been  explained  by  Pausanias: 
"  He  is  a  man  of  Tenedos!  "  to  describe  a  person  of  un- 
questionable veracity;  and  "  To  cut  with  the  Tenedian 
axe  ";  to  express  an  absolute  and  irrevocable  refusal.  The 
first  originated  in  a  King  of  Tenedos,  who  decreed  that 
there  should  always  stand  behind  the  judge  a  man  holding 
an  axe,  ready  to  execute  justice  on  any  one  convicted  of 
falsehood.  The  other  arose  from  the  same  king,  whose 
father  having  reached  his  island,  to  supplicate  the  son's 
forgiveness  for  the  injury  inflicted  on  him  by  the  arts  of 
a  stepmother,  was  preparing  to  land;  already  the  ship  was 
fastened  by  its  cable  to  a  rock,  when  the  son  came  down 
and,  sternly  cutting  the  cable  with  an  axe,  sent  the  ship 
adrift  to  the  mercy  of  the  waves:  hence,  "  to  cut  with  the 
Tenedian  axe  "  became  proverbial  to  express  an  absolute 
refusal.  "  Business  to-morrow!"  is  another  Greek  proverb, 
applied  to  a  person  ruined  by  his  own  neglect.  The  fate 
of  an  eminent  person  perpetuated  the  expression  which  he 
casually  employed  on  the  occasion.  One  of  the  Theban 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS  265 

polemarchs,  in  the  midst  of  a  convivial  party,  received 
despatches  relating  to  a  conspiracy:  flushed  with  wine, 
although  pressed  by  the  courier  to  open  them  immedi- 
ately, he  smiled,  and  in  gaiety  laying  the  letter  under  the 
pillow  of  his  couch,  observed,  "Business  to-morrow!" 
Plutarch  records  that  he  fell  a  victim  to  the  twenty-four 
hours  he  had  lost,  and  became  the  author  of  a  proverb 
which  was  still  circulated  among  the  Greeks. 

The  philosophical  antiquary  may  often  discover  how 
many  a  proverb  commemorates  an  event  which  has  es- 
caped from  the  more  solemn  monuments  of  history,  and 
is  often  the  solitary  authority  of  its  existence.  A  national 
event  in  Spanish  history  is  preserved  by  a  proverb.  Y 
vengar  quiniento  sueldos — "  And  revenge  five  hundred 
pounds!  "  An  odd  expression  to  denote  a  person  being 
a  gentleman !  but  the  proverb  is  historical.  The  Spaniards 
of  Old  Castile  were  compelled  to  pay  an  annual  tribute  of 
five  hundred  maidens  to  their  masters,  the  Moors;  after 
several  battles,  the  Spaniards  succeeded  in  compromising 
the  shameful  tribute  by  as  many  pieces  of  coin:  at  length 
the  day  arrived  when  they  entirely  emancipated  them- 
selves from  this  odious  imposition.  The  heroic  action  was 
performed  by  men  of  distinction,  and  the  event  perpetu- 
ated in  the  recollections  of  the  Spaniards  by  this  singular 
expression,  which  alludes  to  the  dishonourable  tribute, 
was  applied  to  characterize  all  men  of  high  honour,  and 
devoted  lovers  of  their  country. 

Pasquier,  in  his  "  Recherches  sur  la  France/'  reviewing 
the  periodical  changes  of  ancient  families  in  feudal  times, 
observes  that  a  proverb  among  the  common  people  con- 
veys the  result  of  all  his  inquiries;  for  those  noble  houses, 
which  in  a  single  age  declined  from  nobility  and  wealth 
to  poverty  and  meanness,  gave  rise  to  the  proverb,  Cent 
ans  bannieres  et  cent  ans  civieres! — "  One  hundred  years 
a  banner  and  one  hundred  years  a  barrow!  "  The  Italian 
proverb,  Con  1'Evangilio  si  diventa  heretico — "  With  the 
gospel  we  become  heretics  " — reflects  the  policy  of  the 
court  of  Rome;  and  must  be  dated  at  the  time  of  the 
Reformation,  when  a  translation  of  the  Scriptures  into  the 
vulgar  tongue  encountered  such  an  invincible  opposition. 
The  Scotch  proverb,  "  He  that  invented  the  maiden  first 


266  DISRAELI 

hanselled  it  " — that  is,  got  the  first  of  it!  The  maiden  is 
that  well-known  beheading  engine  revived  by  the  French 
surgeon  Guillotine.  This  proverb  may  be  applied  to  one 
who  falls  a  victim  to  his  own  ingenuity;  the  artificer  of 
his  own  destruction!  The  inventor  was  James,  Earl  of 
Morton,  who  for  some  years  governed  Scotland,  and  after- 
ward, it  is  said,  very  unjustly  suffered  by  his  own  inven- 
tion. It  is  a  striking  coincidence  that  the  same  fate  was 
shared  by  the  French  reviver;  both  alike  sad  examples  of 
disturbed  times!  Among  our  own  proverbs  a  remarkable 
incident  has  been  commemorated,  "  Hand  over  head,  as 
the  men  took  the  Covenant!  "  This  preserves  the  manner 
in  which  the  Scotch  covenant,  so  famous  in  our  history, 
was  violently  taken  by  above  sixty  thousand  persons  about 
Edinburgh,  in  1638;  a  circumstance  at  that  time  novel  in 
our  own  revolutionary  history,  and  afterward  paralleled 
by  the  French  in  voting  by  "  acclamation."  An  ancient 
English  proverb  preserves  a  curious  fact  concerning  our 
coinage,  "  Testers  are  gone  to  Oxford  to  study  at  Brazen- 
nose."  When  Henry  VIII  debased  the  silver  coin,  called 
testers,  from  their  having  a  head  stamped  on  one  side, 
the  brass,  breaking  out  in  red  pimples  on  their  silver  faces, 
provoked  the  ill-humour  of  the  people  to  vent  itself  in 
this  punning  proverb,  which  has  preserved  for  the  histor- 
ical antiquary  the  popular  feeling  which  lasted  about  fifty 
years,  till  Elizabeth  reformed  the  state  of  the  coinage. 
A  northern  proverb  among  us  has  preserved  the  remark- 
able idea  which  seems  to  have  once  been  prevalent,  that 
the  metropolis  of  England  was  to  be  the  city  of  York — 
"  Lincoln  was,  London  is,  York  shall  be! "  Whether 
at  the  time  of  the  union  of  the  crowns,  under  James  I, 
when  England  and  Scotland  became  Great  Britain,  this 
city,  from  its  centrical  situation,  was  considered  as  the 
best  adapted  for  the  seat  of  government,  or  for  some  other 
cause  which  I  have  not  discovered,  this  notion  must  have 
been  prevalent  to  have  entered  into  a  proverb.  The  chief 
magistrate  of  York  is  the  only  provincial  one  who  is  al- 
lowed the  title  of  lord  mayor;  a  circumstance  which  seems 
connected  with  this  proverb. 

The   Italian   history   of   its   own    small   principalities, 
whose  well-being  §o  much  depended  on  their  prudence  and 


THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS  267 

sagacity,  affords  many  instances  of  the  timely  use  of  a 
proverb.  Many  an  intricate  negotiation  has  been  con- 
tracted through  a  good-humoured  proverb — many  a  sar- 
castic one  has  silenced  an  adversary;  and  sometimes  they 
have  been  applied  on  more  solemn  and  even  tragical  occa- 
sions. When  Rinaldo  degli  Albizzi  was  banished  by  the 
vigorous  conduct  of  Cosmo  de'  Medici,  Machiavel  tells  us 
the  expelled  man  sent  Cosmo  a  menace  in  a  proverb,  La 
gallina  covava! — "The  hen  is  brooding!"  said  of  one 
meditating  vengeance.  The  undaunted  Cosmo  replied  by 
another,  that  "  There  was  no  brooding  out  of  the  nest!  " 

I  give  an  example  of  peculiar  interest,  for  it  is  per- 
petuated by  Dante  and  is  connected  with  the  character  of 
Milton. 

When  the  families  of  the  Amadei  and  the  Uberti  felt 
their  honour  wounded  in  the  affront  the  younger  Buon- 
delmonte  had  put  upon  them,  in  breaking  off  his  match 
with  a  young  lady  of  their  family,  by  marrying  another, 
a  council  was  held,  and  the  death  of  the  young  cavalier 
was  proposed  as  the  sole  atonement  for  their  injured  hon- 
our. But  the  consequences  which  they  anticipated,  and 
which  afterward  proved  so  fatal  to  the  Florentines,  long 
suspended  their  decision.  At  length  Moscha  Lamberti, 
suddenly  rising,  exclaimed,  in  two  proverbs,  "  That  those 
who  considered  everything  would  never  conclude  on  any- 
thing! "  closing  with  an  ancient  proverbial  saying,  Cosa 
fatta  capo  ha! — "  A  deed  done  has  an  end!  "  The  proverb 
sealed  the  fatal  determination,  and  was  long  held  in 
mournful  remembrance  by  the  Tuscans;  for,  according  to 
Villani,  it  was  the  cause  and  beginning  of  the  accursed 
factions  of  the  Guelphs  and  the  Ghibellines.  Dante  has 
thus  immortalized  the  energetic  expression  in  a  scene  of 
the  "Inferno": 

Ed  un,  ch'  avea  1'  una  e  1'  altra  man  mozza, 
Levando  i  moncherin  per  1'  aura  fosca, 
Si  che  '1  sangue  facea  la  faccia  sozza, 
Grido:  "  Ricorderati  anche  del  Mosca, 
Che  dissi,  lasso:  Capo  ha  cosa  fatta, 
Che  fu  '1  mal  seme  della  gente  Tosca." 

"  Then  one 

Maimed  of  each  hand,  uplifted  in  the  gloom 
The  bleeding  stumps,  that  they  with  gory  spots 
Sullied  his  face,  and  cried:  '  Remember  thee 


DISRAELI 

Of  Mosca  too — I  who,  alas!  exclaimed, 

41  The  deed  once  done,  there  is  an  end  "—that  proved 

A  seed  of  sorrow  to  the  Tuscan  race.'  " 

(Gary's  "  Dante.") 

This  Italian  proverb  was  adopted  by  Milton;  for  when 
deeply  engaged  in  writing  "  The  Defence  of  the  People," 
and  warned  that  it  might  terminate  in  his  blindness,  he 
resolvedly  concluded  his  work,  exclaiming  with  great 
magnanimity,  although  the  fatal  prognostication  had  been 
accomplished,  Cosa  fatta  capo  ha!  Did  this  proverb  also 
influence  his  awful  decision  on  that  great  national  event, 
when  the  most  honest-minded  fluctuated  between  doubts 
and  fears? 

Of  a  person  treacherously  used,  the  Italian  proverb 
says  that  he  has  eaten  of 

Le  frutte  di  fratre  Alberigo. 
"  The  fruit  of  brother  Alberigo." 

Landino,  on  the  following  passage  of  Dante,  preserves  the 

tragic  story: 

Io  son  fratre  Alberigo, 
lo  son  quel  dalle  frutta  del  mal  orto 
Che  qui  reprendo,  etc.    (Canto  xxxiii.) 
"  '  The  friar  Alberigo/  answered  he, 
'  Am  I,  who  from  the  evil  garden  plucked 
Its  fruitage,  and  am  here  repaid  the  date 
More  luscious  for  my  fig.'  " 

(Gary's  "  Dante.") 

This  was  Manfred,  the  Lord  of  Fuenza,  who,  after  many 
cruelties,  turned  friar.  Reconciling  himself  to  those  whom 
he  had  so  often  opposed,  to  celebrate  the  renewal  of  their 
friendship  he  invited  them  to  a  magnificent  entertainment. 
At  the  end  of  the  dinner  the  horn  blew  to  announce  the 
dessert — but  it  was  the  signal  of  this  dissimulating  con- 
spirator!— and  the  fruits  which  that  day  were  served  to 
his  guests  were  armed  men,  who,  rushing  in,  immolated 
their  victims. 

Among  these  historical  proverbs  none  are  more  enter- 
taining than  those  which  perpetuate  national  events,  con- 
nected with  those  of  another  people.  When  a  French- 
man would  let  us  understand  that  he  has  settled  with  his 
creditors,  the  proverb  is,  J'ai  paye  tous  mes  Anglois — "  I 
have  paid  all  my  English."  This  proverb  originated  when 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS  269 

John,  the  French  king,  was  taken  prisoner  by  our  Black 
Prince.  Levies  of  money  were  made  for  the  king's  ran- 
som, and  for  many  French  lords;  and  the  French  people 
have  thus  perpetuated  the  military  glory  of  our  nation, 
and  their  own  idea  of  it,  by  making  the  English  and  their 
creditors  synonymous  terms.  Another  relates  to  the  same 
event,  Le  Pape  est  devenu  Francois,  et  Jesus  Christ  An- 
glais— '  Now  the  Pope  is  become  French  and  Jesus  Christ 
English";  a  proverb  which  arose  when  the  Pope,  exiled 
from  Rome,  held  his  court  at  Avignon  in  France,  and  the 
English  prospered  so  well  that  they  possessed  more  than 
half  the  kingdom.  The  Spanish  proverb  concerning  Eng- 
land is  well  known: 

Con  todo  el  mondo  guerra, 
Y  paz  con  Inglaterra! 
"  War  with  the  world, 
And  peace  with  England!  " 

Whether  this  proverb  was  one  of  the  results  of  their 
memorable  armada,  and  was  only  coined  after  their  convic- 
tion of  the  splendid  folly  which  they  had  committed,  I  can 
not  ascertain.  England  must  always  have  been  a  desirable 
ally  to  Spain  against  her  potent  rival  and  neighbour.  The 
Italians  have  a  proverb,  which  formerly,  at  least,  was 
strongly  indicative  of  the  travelled  Englishmen  in  their 
country,  Inglese  Italianato  e  un  diavolo  incarnato — "  The 
Italianized  Englishman  is  a  devil  incarnate."  Formerly 
there  existed  a  closer  intercourse  between  our  country  and 
Italy  than  with  France.  Before  and  during  the  reigns 
of  Elizabeth  and  James  I  that  land  of  the  elegant  arts 
modelled  our  taste  and  manners:  and  more  Italians  trav- 
elled into  England,  and  were  more  constant  residents, 
from  commercial  concerns,  than  afterward  when  France 
assumed  a  higher  rank  in  Europe  by  her  political  superi- 
ority. This  cause  will  sufficiently  account  for  the  number 
of  Italian  proverbs  relating  to  England,  which  show  an 
intimacy  with  our  manners  that  could  not  else  have  oc- 
curred. It  was  probably  some  sarcastic  Italian,  and,  per- 
haps, horologer,  who,  to  describe  the  disagreement  of 
persons,  proverbed  our  nation,  "  They  agree  like  the 
clocks  of  London!"  We  were  once  better  famed  for 
merry  Christmases  and  their  pies;  and  it  must  have  been 
18 


DISRAELI 

the  Italians  who  had  been  domiciliated  with  us  who  gave 
currency  to  the  proverb,  Ha  piu  da  fare  che  i  forni  di 
natale  in  Inghilterra — "  He  has  more  business  than  Eng- 
lish ovens  at  Christmas."  Our  pie-loving  gentry  were 
notorious,  and  Shakespeare's  folio  was  usually  laid  open 
in  the  great  halls  of  our  nobility  to  entertain  their  attend- 
ants, who  devoured  at  once  Shakespeare  and  their  pasty. 
Some  of  those  volumes  have  come  down  to  us  not  only 
with  the  stains,  but  inclosing  even  the  identical  pie-crusts 
of  the  Elizabethan  age. 

I  have  thus  attempted  to  develop  the  art  of  reading 
proverbs,  but  have  done  little  more  than  indicate  the 
theory,  and  must  leave  the  skilful  student  to  the  delicacy 
of  the  practice.  I  am  anxious  to  rescue  from  prevailing 
prejudices  these  neglected  stores  of  curious  amusement 
and  of  deep  insight  into  the  ways  of  man,  and  to  point  out 
the  bold  and  concealed  truths  which  are  scattered  in  these 
collections.  There  seems  to  be  no  occurrence  in  human 
affairs  to  which  some  proverb  may  not  be  applied.  All 
knowledge  was  long  aphoristical  and  traditional,  pithily 
contracting  the  discoveries  which  were  to  be  instantly 
comprehended  and  easily  retained.  Whatever  be  the  revo- 
lutionary state  of  man,  similar  principles  and  like  occur- 
rences are  returning  on  us;  and  antiquity,  whenever  it  is 
justly  applicable  to  our  times,  loses  its  denomination,  and 
becomes  the  truth  of  our  own  age.  A  proverb  will  often 
cut  the  knot  which  others  in  vain  are  attempting  to  untie. 
Johnson,  palled  with  the  redundant  elegancies  of  modern 
composition,  once  said,  "  I  fancy  mankind  may  come  in 
time  to  write  all  aphoristically,  except  in  narrative;  grow 
weary  of  preparation,  and  connection,  and  illustration,  and 
all  those  arts  by  which  a  big  book  is  made."  Many  a  vol- 
ume, indeed,  has  often  been  written  to  demonstrate  what 
a  lover  of  proverbs  could  show  had  long  been  ascertained 
by  a  single  one  in  his  favourite  collections. 

An  insurmountable  difficulty,  which  every  parremiog- 
rapher  has  encountered,  is  that  of  forming  an  apt,  a  ready, 
and  a  systematic  classification:  the  moral  Linnaeus  of  such 
a  "  systema  naturae  "  has  not  yet  appeared.  Each  discov- 
ered his  predecessor's  mode  imperfect,  but  each  was 
doomed  to  meet  the  same  fate.12  The  arrangement  of 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS 


271 


proverbs  has  baffled  the  ingenuity  of  every  one  of  their 
collectors.  Our  Ray,  after  long  premeditation,  has  chosen 
a  system  with  the  appearance  of  an  alphabetical  order; 
but,  as  it  turns  out,  his  system  is  no  system,  and  his  alpha- 
bet is  no  alphabet.  After  ten  years'  labour,  the  good 
man  could  only  arrange  his  proverbs  by  commonplaces — 
by  complete  sentences — by  phrases  or  forms  of  speech — 
by  proverbial  similes — and  so  on.  All  these  are  pursued 
in  alphabetical  order,  "  by  the  first  letter  of  the  most 
'  material  word,'  or,  if  there  be  more  words  '  equally  mate- 
rial/ by  that  which  usually  stands  foremost."  The  most 
patient  examiner  will  usually  find  that  he  wants  the  sagaci- 
ty of  the  collector  to  discover  that  word  which  is  "  the 
most  material,"  or  "  the  words  equally  material."  We 
have  to  search  through  all  that  multiplicity  of  divisions, 
or  conjuring  boxes,  in  which  this  juggler  of  proverbs  pre- 
tends to  hide  the  ball. 

A  still  more  formidable  objection  against  a  collection 
of  proverbs  for  the  impatient  reader  is  their  unreadable- 
ness.  Taking  in  succession  a  multitude  of  insulated  prov- 
erbs, their  slippery  nature  resists  all  hope  of  retaining  one 
in  a  hundred;  the  study  of  proverbs  must  be  a  frequent 
recurrence  to  a  gradual  collection  of  favourite  ones,  which 
we  ourselves  must  form.  The  experience  of  life  will  throw 
a  perpetual  freshness  over  these  short  and  simple  texts; 
every  day  may  furnish  a  new  commentary;  and  we  may 
grow  old  and  find  novelty  in  proverbs  by  their  perpetual 
application. 

There  are,  perhaps,  about  twenty  thousand  proverbs 
among  the  nations  of  Europe:  many  of  these  have  spread 
in  their  common  intercourse;  many  are  borrowed  from  the 
ancients,  chiefly  the  Greeks,  who  themselves  largely  took 
them  from  the  Eastern  nations.  Our  own  proverbs  are 
too  often  deficient  in  that  elegance  and  ingenuity  which 
are  often  found  in  the  Spanish  and  the  Italian.  Proverbs 
frequently  enliven  conversation,  or  enter  into  the  business 
of  life  in  those  countries  without  any  feeling  of  vulgarity 
being  associated  with  them:  they  are  too  numerous,  too 
witty,  and  too  wise  to  cease  to  please  by  their  poignancy 
and  their  aptitude.  I  have  heard  them  fall  from  the  lips 
of  men  of  letters  and  of  statesmen,.  When  recently  the 


2/2 


DISRAELI 


disorderly  state  of  the  manufacturers  of  Manchester  men- 
aced an  insurrection,  a  profound  Italian  politician  observed 
to  me  that  it  was  not  of  a  nature  to  alarm  a  great  nation; 
for  that  the  remedy  was  at  hand,  in  the  proverb  of  the 
Lazzaroni  of  Naples,  Meta  consiglio,  meta  esempio,  meta 
denaro! — "  Half  advice,  half  example,  half  money!  "  The 
result  confirmed  the  truth  of  the  proverb,  which,  had  it 
been  known  at  the  time,  might  have  quieted  the  honest 
fears  of  a  great  part  of  the  nation. 

Proverbs  have  ceased  to  be  studied  or  employed  in 
conversation  since  the  time  we  have  derived  our  knowl- 
edge from  books;  but  in  a  philosophical  age  they  appear 
to  offer  infinite  subjects  for  speculative  curiosity.  Origi- 
nating in  various  eras,  these  memorials  of  manners,  of 
events,  and  of  modes  of  thinking,  for  historical  as  well  as 
for  moral  purposes,  still  retain  a  strong  hold  on  our  atten- 
tion. The  collected  knowledge  of  successive  ages  and  of 
different  people  must  always  enter  into  some  part  of  our 
own!  Truth  and  nature  can  never  be  obsolete. 

Proverbs  embrace  the  wide  sphere  of  human  existence, 
they  take  all  the  colours  of  life,  they  are  often  exquisite 
strokes  of  genius,  they  delight  by  their  airy  sarcasm  or 
their  caustic  satire,  the  luxuriance  of  their  humour,  the 
playfulness  of  their  turn,  and  even  by  the  elegance  of  their 
imagery,  and  the  tenderness  of  their  sentiment.  They 
give  a  deep  insight  into  domestic  life,  and  open  for  us 
the  heart  of  man,  in  all  the  various  states  which  he  may 
occupy — a  frequent  review  of  proverbs  should  enter  into 
our  readings;  and  although  they  are  no  longer  the  orna- 
ments of  conversation,  they  have  not  ceased  to  be  the 
treasuries  of  thought! 

NOTES 

1  Taylor's  "  Translation  of  Plato's  Works,"  vol.  v,  p.  36. 

*  Shakespeare  satirically  alludes  to  the  quality  of  such  rhymes  in  his 
"  Merchant  of  Venice,"  act  v,  scene  i.     Speaking  of  one — 

"  Whose  poesy  was 
For  all  the  world  like  cutler's  poetry 
Upon  a  knife,  Love  me,  and  leave  me  not." 

*  One  of  the  fruit  trenchers,  for  such  these  roundels  are  called  in 
the  "  Gentleman's  Magazine  "  for  1793,  p.  398,  is  engraved  there,  and 
the  inscriptions  of  an  entire  set  given.     (See  also  the  Supplement  to 
that  volume,  p.  1187.)     The  author  of  the  "Art  of  English  Poesie," 
1589,  tells  us  they  never  contained  above  one  verse,  or  two  at  the  most, 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   PROVERBS 


273 


but  the  shorter  the  better.    Two  specimens  may  suffice  the  reader.    One, 
under  the  symbol  of  a  skull,  thus  morally  discourses: 
"  Content  thyself  with  thine  estate, 
And  send  no  poor  wight  from  thy  gate; 
For  why,  this  counsel  I  you  give, 
To  learne  to  die,  and  die  to  live." 

On  another,  decorated  with  pictures  of  fruit,  are  these  satirical  lines: 
Feed  and  be  fat:  hear's  pears  and  plums, 
Will  never  hurt  your  teeth  or  spoil  your  gums. 
And  I  wish  those  girls  that  painted  are, 
No  other  food  than  such  fine  painted  fare." 

4  This  constant  custom  of  engraving  "  posies,"  as  they  were  termed, 
on  rings  is  noted  by  many  authors  of  the  Elizabethan  era.    Lilly,  in  his 
"  Euphues,"   addresses   the   ladies   for  a  favourable  judgment  on   his 
work,  hoping  it  will  be  recorded  "  as  you  do  the  posies  in  your  rings, 
which  are  always  next  to  the  finger  not  to  be  scene  of  him  that  holdeth 
you  by  the  hand,  and  yet  knowne  by  you  that  weare  them  on  your 
hands."    They  were  always  engraved  withinside  of  the  ring.    A  manu- 
script of  the  time  of  Charles  I  furnishes  us  with  a  single  posy,  of  one 
line,  to  this  effect:  "This  hath  alloy;  my  love  is  pure."     From  the 
same  source  we  have  the  two  following  rhyming,  or  "  double  posies": 
"  Constancy  and  heaven  are  round, 
And  in  this  the  emblem's  found." 
"  Weare  me  out,  love  shall  not  waste; 
Love  beyond  tyme  still  is  placed." 

8  Heywood's  "  Dialogue,  conteyninge  the  Number  in  Effecte  of  all 
the  Proverbes  in  the  English  Tunge,  1561." 

9  The  whole  of  Tusser's  "  Five   Hundred   Pointes  of  Good   Hus- 
bandrie,"  1580,  was  composed  in  quaint  couplets,  long  remembered  by 
the  peasantry  for  their  homely  worldly  wisdom.     One,  constructed  for 
the  bakehouse,  runs  thus: 

"  New  bread  is  a  drivell  (waste); 

Much  crust  is  as  evil." 
Another  for  the  dairymaid  assures  her: 

"  Good  dairie  doth  pleasure; 

111  dairie  spends  treasure." 
Another  might  rival  any  lesson  of  thrift: 

"  Where  nothing  will  last, 
Spare  such  as  thou  hast." 
T  Townshend's  "  Historical  Collections,"  p.  283. 

*  It  was  published  in  1616;  the  writer  only  catches  at  some  verbal 
expressions,  as,  for  instance: 

The  vulgar  proverb  runs,  "  The  more  the  merrier." 
The  cross,  "  Not  so!  one  hand  is  enough  in  a  purse." 
The  proverb,  "  It  is  a  great  way  to  the  bottom  of  the  sea." 
The  cross,  "  Not  so!  it  is  but  a  stone's  cast." 

The  proverb,  "  The  pride  of  the  rich  makes  the  labours  of  the  poor." 
The  cross,  "  Not  so!  the  labours  of  the  poor  make  the  pride  of  the 
rich." 

The  proverb,  "  He  runs  far  who  never  turns." 

The  cross,  "  Not  so!  he  may  break  his  neck  in  a  short  course." 

*  It  has  been  suggested  that  this  whimsical  amusement  has  been 
lately  revived,  to  a  certain  degree,  in  the  acting  of  charades  among 
juvenile  parties. 

10  Now  the  punning  motto  of  a  noble  family. 

11  At  the  Royal  Institution  there  is  a  fine  copy  of  Polydore  Vergil's 


274  DISRAELI 

"  Adagia,"  with  his  other  work,  curious  in  its  day,  "  De  Inventoribus 
Rerum,"  printed  by  Frobenius,  in  1521.  The  wood-cuts  of  this  edition 
seem  to  me  to  be  executed  with  inimitable  delicacy,  resembling  a  pen- 
cilling which  Raphael  might  have  envied. 

"Since  the  appearance  of  the  present  article  several  collections  of 
proverbs  have  been  attempted.  A  little  unpretending  volume,  entitled 
"  Select  Proverbs  of  All  Nations,  with  Notes  and  Comments,"  by 
Thomas  Fielding,  1824,  is  not  ill  arranged;  an  excellent  book  for 
popular  reading.  The  editor  of  a  recent  miscellaneous  compilation, 
"  The  Treasury  of  Knowledge,"  has  whimsically  bordered  the  four 
sides  of  the  pages  of  a  dictionary  with  as  many  proverbs.  The  plan 
was  ingenious,  but  the  proverbs  are  not.  Triteness  and  triviality  are 
fatal  to  a  proverb. 


A  COMPLAINT 
OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS 


AND 


THE  CONVALESCENT 


BY 

CHARLES   LAMB 


CHARLES  LAMB  was  born  in  London,  February  18,  1775.  He  was 
educated  at  Christ's  Hospital,  and  had  Coleridge  for  a  school-fellow.  An 
impediment  in  his  speech  prevented  him  from  taking  holy  orders,  and  he 
became  a  book-keeper,  first  in  the  South  Sea  House  and  afterward  in  the 
India  House.  His  description  of  the  former  stands  first  in  his  collected 
essays,  and  when  the  latter  retired  him  with  a  pension  at  the  age  of  fifty 
he  wrote  that  which  bears  the  title  "The  Superannuated  Man."  There 
was  a  hereditary  taint  of  insanity,  and  at  the  age  of  twenty  he  spent  six 
weeks  in  an  asylum.  The  next  year  his  elder  sister,  Mary,  in  a  fit  of 
derangement,  killed  her  mother.  Charles  thereupon  gave  up  a  marriage 
engagement  and  devoted  himself  to  the  care  of  his  sister.  They  lived 
quietly  in  London,  hating  the  country,  and  found  their  pastime  in  the 
theatre  and  perusal  of  old  folios.  Lamb  had  published  a  few  poems,  a 
tale,  and  a  tragedy,  when  at  the  age  of  thirty-five  he  began  to  write  the 
essays  that  have  given  him  a  permanent  place  in  English  literature. 
These  appeared  first  in  periodicals,  and  bore  the  signature  "  Elia."  The 
Lambs  used  to  have  little  Wednesday  evening  receptions  at  their  lodg- 
ings in  the  Inner  Temple,  which  were  attended  by  nearly  all  the  English 
authors  of  that  day  who  have  become  famous,  and  are  described  as  being 
very  odd  and  interesting.  Charles  is-  said  to  have  been  a  brilliant  talker. 
They  lived  afterward  in  Islington,  Enfield,  and  Edmonton,  and  Charles 
died  December  27,  1834. 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS 

IN   THE   METROPOLIS 

THE  all-sweeping  besom  of  societarian  reformation — 
your  only  modern  Alcides's  club  to  rid  the  time  of 
its  abuses — is  uplift  with  many-handed  sway  to  ex- 
tirpate the  last  fluttering  tatters  of  the  bugbear  Mendicity 
'rorn  the  metropolis.  Scrips,  wallets,  bags — staves,  dogs, 
and  crutches — the  whole  mendicant  fraternity,  with  all 
their  baggage,  are  fast  posting  out  of  the  purlieus  of  this 
eleventh  persecution.  From  the  crowded  crossing,  from 
the  corners  of  streets  and  turnings  of  alleys,  the  parting 
Genius  of  Beggary  is  "  with  sighing  sent." 

I  do  not  approve  of  this  wholesale  going  to  work,  this 
impertinent  crusado,  or  bellum  ad  exterminationem,  pro- 
claimed against  a  species.  Much  good  might  be  sucked 
from  these  beggars. 

They  were  the  oldest  and  the  honourablest  form  of 
pauperism.  Their  appeals  were  to  our  common  nature; 
less  revolting  to  an  ingenuous  mind  than  to  be  a  suppliant 
to  the  particular  humours  or  caprice  of  any  fellow-creature, 
or  set  of  fellow-creatures,  parochial  or  societarian.  Theirs 
were  the  only  rates  uninvidious  in  the  levy,  ungrudged  in 
the  assessment. 

There  was  a  dignity  springing  from  the  very  depth  of 
their  desolation;  as  to  be  naked  is  to  be  so  much  nearer 
to  being  a  man  than  to  go  in  livery. 

The  greatest  spirits  have  felt  this  in  their  reverses;  and 
when  Dionysius  from  king  turned  schoolmaster,  do  we  feel 
anything  toward  him  but  contempt?  Could  Vandyke 
have  made  a  picture  of  him,  swaying  a  ferula  for  a  scep- 
tre, which  would  have  affected  our  minds  with  the  same 
heroic  pity,  the  same  compassionate  admiration,  with 
which  we  regard  his  Belisarius  begging  for  an  obolus? 

277 


273 


LAMB 


Would  the  moral  have  been  more  graceful,  more  pa- 
thetic? 

The  Blind  Beggar  in  the  legend — the  father  of  pretty 
Bessy — whose  story  doggerel  rhymes  and  ale-house  signs 
can  not  so  degrade  or  attenuate  but  that  some  sparks  of  a 
lustrous  spirit  will  shine  through  the  disguisements — this 
noble  Earl  of  Cornwall  (as,  indeed,  he  was)  and  memorable 
sport  of  fortune,  fleeing  from  the  unjust  sentence  of  his 
liege  lord,  stripped  of  all,  and  seated  on  the  flowering  green 
of  Bethnal,  with  his  more  fresh  and  springing  daughter  by 
his  side,  illumining  his  rags  and  his  beggary — would  the 
child  and  parent  have  cut  a  better  figure  doing  the  hon- 
ours of  a  counter,  or  expiating  their  fallen  condition  upon 
the  three-foot  eminence  of  some  sempstering  shop-board? 

In  tale  or  history  your  beggar  is  ever  the  just  antipode 
to  your  king.  The  poets  and  romancical  writers  (as  dear 
Margaret  Newcastle  would  call  them),  when  they  would 
most  sharply  and  feelingly  paint  a  reverse  of  fortune,  never 
stop  till  they  have  brought  down  their  hero  in  good  earnest 
to  rags  and  the  wallet.  The  depth  of  the  descent  illus- 
trates the  height  he  falls  from.  There  is  no  medium  which 
can  be  presented  to  the  imagination  without  offence. 
There  is  no  breaking  the  fall.  Lear,  thrown  from  his  pal- 
ace, must  divest  him  of  his  garments,  till  he  answer  "  mere 
Nature";  and  Cresseid,  fallen  from  a  prince's  love,  must 
extend  her  pale  arms,  pale  with  other  whiteness  than  of 
beauty,  supplicating  lazar  arms  with  bell  and  clap-dish. 

The  Lucian  wits  knew  this  very  well;  and,  with  a  con- 
verse policy,  when  they  would  express  scorn  of  greatness 
without  the  pity,  they  show  us  an  Alexander  in  the  shades 
cobbling  shoes,  or  a  Semiramis  getting  up  foul  linen. 

How  would  it  sound  in  song  that  a  great  monarch  had 
declined  his  affections  upon  the  daughter  of  a  baker!  yet 
do  we  feel  the  imagination  at  all  violated  when  we  read 
the  "  true  ballad,"  where  King  Cophetua  wooes  the  beggar 
maid? 

Pauperism,  pauper,  poor  man,  are  expressions  of  pity, 
but  pity  alloyed  with  contempt.  No  one  properly  con- 
temns a  beggar.  Poverty  is  a  comparative  thing,  and  each 
degree  of  it  is  mocked  by  its  "  neighbour  grice."  Its  poor 
rents  and  comings-in  are  soon  summed  up  and  told.  Its 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS   279 

pretences  to  property  are  almost  ludicrous.  Its  pitiful 
attempts  to  save  excite  a  smile.  Every  scornful  compan- 
ion can  weigh  his  trifle-bigger  purse  against  it.  Poor  man 
reproaches  poor  man  in  the  street  with  impolitic  mention 
of  his  condition,  his  own  being  a  shade  better,  while  the 
rich  pass  by  and  sneer  at  both.  No  rascally  comparative 
insults  a  beggar,  or  thinks  of  weighing  purses  with  him. 
He  is  not  in  the  scale  of  comparison.  He  is  not  under  the 
measure  of  property.  He  confessedly  hath  none,  any  more 
than  a  dog  or  a  sheep.  No  one  twitteth  him  with  ostenta- 
tion above  his  means.  No  one  accuses  him  of  pride,  or 
upbraideth  him  with  mock  humility.  None  jostle  with  him 
for  the  wall,  or  pick  quarrels  for  precedency.  No  wealthy 
neighbour  seeketh  to  eject  him  from  his  tenement.  No 
man  sues  him.  No  man  goes  to  law  with  him.  If  I  were 
not  the  independent  gentleman  that  I  am,  rather  than  I 
would  be  a  retainer  to  the  great,  a  led  captain,  or  a  poor 
relation,^!  would  choose,  out  of  the  delicacy  and  true  great- 
ness of  my  mind,  to  be  a  beggar. 

Rags,  which  are  the  reproach  of  poverty,  are  the  beg- 
gar's robes,  and  graceful  insignia  of  his  profession,  his 
tenure,  his  full  dress,  the  suit  in  which  he  is  expected  to 
show  himself  in  public.  He  is  never  out  of  the  fashion,  or 
limpeth  awkwardly  behind  it.  He  is  not  required  to  put 
on  court  mourning.  He  weareth  all  colours,  fearing  none. 
His  costume  hath  undergone  less  change  than  the 
Quaker's.  He  is  the  only  man  in  the  universe  who  is  not 
obliged  to  study  appearances.  The  ups  and  downs  of  the 
world  concern  him  no  longer.  He  alone  continueth  in  one 
stay.  The  price  of  stock  or  land  affecteth  him  not.  The 
fluctuations  of  agricultural  or  commercial  prosperity  touch 
him  not,  or  at  worst  but  change  his  customers.  He  is  not 
expected  to  become  bail  or  surety  for  any  one.  No  man 
troubleth  him  with  questioning  his  religion  or  politics.  He 
is  the  only  free  man  in  the  universe. 

The  mendicants  of  this  great  city  were  so  many  of  her 
sights,  her  lions.  I  can  no  more  spare  them  than  I  could 
the  cries  of  London.  No  corner  of  a  street  is  complete 
without  them.  They  are  as  indispensable  as  the  ballad 
singer,  and  in  their  picturesque  attire  as  ornamental  as  the 
signs  of  old  London.  They  were  the  standing  morals, 


2$0  LAMB 

emblems,  mementoes,  dial-mottoes,  the  spital  sermons,  the 
books  for  children,  the  salutary  checks  and  pauses  to  the 
high  and  rushing  tide  of  greasy  citizenry: 


-Look 


Upon  that  poor  and  broken  bankrupt  there." 

Above  all,  those  old  blind  Tobits  that  used  to  line  the  wall 
of  Lincoln's-Inn  Garden,  before  modern  fastidiousness  had 
expelled  them,  casting  up  their  ruined  orbs  to  catch  a  ray 
of  pity,  and  (if  possible)  of  light,  with  their  faithful  dog 
guide  at  their  feet — whither  are  they  fled?  or  into  what 
corners,  blind  as  themselves,  have  they  been  driven,  out  of 
the  wholesome  air  and  sun- warmth?  immersed  between 
four  walls,  in  what  withering  poor-house  do  they  endure 
the  penalty  of  double  darkness,  where  the  chink  of  the 
dropped  halfpenny  no  more  consoles  their  forlorn  bereave- 
ment, far  from  the  sound  of  the  cheerful  and  hope-stirring 
tread  of  the  passenger?  Where  hang  their  useless  staves? 
and  who  will  farm  their  dogs?  Have  the  overseers  of  St. 

L caused  them  to  be  shot?  or  were  they  tied  up  in 

sacks  and  dropped  into  the  Thames,  at  the  suggestion  of 

B ,  the  mild  rector  of ? 

Well  fare  the  soul  of  unfastidious  Vincent  Bourne — 
most  classical,  and,  at  the  same  time,  most  English  of  the 
Latinists! — who  has  treated  of  this  human  and  quadru- 
pedal alliance,  this  dog  and  man  friendship,  in  the  sweetest 
of  his  poems,  the  "  Epitaphium  in  Canem,"  or,  "  Dog's 
Epitaph."  Reader,  peruse  it;  and  say,  if  customary  sights, 
which  could  call  up  such  gentle  poetry  as  this,  were  of  a 
nature  to  do  more  harm  or  good  to  the  moral  sense  of  the 
passengers  through  the  daily  thoroughfares  of  a  vast  and 
busy  metropolis: 

Pauperis  hie  Iri  requiesco  Lyciscus,  herilis, 

Dum  vixi,  tutela  vigil  columenque  senectae, 

Dux  caeco  fidus:  nee,  me  ducente,  solebat, 

Praetenso  hinc  atque  hinc  baculo,  per  iniqua  locorum 

Incertam  explorare  viam;  sed  fila  secutus, 

Quas  dubios  regerent  passus,  vestigia  tuta 

Fixit  inoffenso  gressu;  gelidumque  sedile 

In  nudo  nactus  saxo,  qua  prastereuntium 

Unda  frequens  confluxit,  ibi  miserisque  tenebras 

Lamentis,  noctemque  oculis  ploravit  obortam. 

Ploravit  nee  frustra;  obolum  dedit  alter  et  alter, 

Queis  corda  et  mentem  indiderat  natura  benignam. 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS   281 

Ad  latus  interea  jacui  sopitus  herile, 
Vel  mediis  vigil  in  somnis;  ad  herilia  jussa 
Auresque  atque  animum  arrectus,  seu  frustula  amice 
Porrexit  sociasque  dapes,  seu  longa  diei 
Taedia  perpessus,  reditum  sub  nocte  parabat. 
Hi  mores,  haec  vita  fuit,  dum  fata  sinebant, 
Dum  neque  languebam  morbis,  nee  inerte  senecta 

8uae  tandem  obrepsit,  veterique  satellite  caecum 
rbavit  dominum;  prisci  sed  gratia  facti 
Ne  tota  intereat,  longos  deleta  per  annos, 
Exiguum  hunc  Irus  tumulum  de  cespite  fecit, 
Etsi  inopis,  non  ingratae,  munuscula  dextrae; 
Carmine  signavitque  brevi,  dominumque  canemque, 
Quod  memoret,  fidumque  Canem  dominumque  Benignum. 

"  Poor  Irus'  faithful  wolf-dog  here  I  lie, 
That  wont  to  tend  my  old  blind  master's  steps, 
His  guide  and  guard;  nor,  while  my  service  lasted, 
Had  he  occasion  for  that  staff,  with  which 
He  now  goes  picking  out  his  path  in  fear 
Over  the  highways  and  crossings;  but  would  plant, 
Safe  in  the  conduct  of  my  friendly  string, 
A  nrrp  foot  forward  still,  till  he  had  reached 
His  poor  seat  on  some  stone,  nigh  where  the  tide 
Of  passers-by  in  thickest  confluence  flowed: 
To  whom  with  loud  and  passionate  laments 
From  morn  to  eve  his  dark  estate  he  wailed. 
Nor  wailed  to  all  in  vain:  some  here  and  there, 
The  well-disposed  and  good,  their  pennies  gave. 
I  meantime  at  his  feet  obsequious  slept; 
Not  all-asleep  in  sleep,  but  heart  and  ear 
Pricked  up  at  his  least  motion;  to  receive 
At  his  kind  hand  my  customary  crumbs, 
And  common  portion  in  his  feast  of  scraps; 
Or  when  night  warned  us  homeward,  tired  and  spent 
With  our  long  day  and  tedious  beggary. 

These  were  my  manners,  this  my  way  of  life 
Till  age  and  slow  disease  me  overtook, 
And  severed  from  my  sightless  master's  side. 
But  lest  the  grace  of  so  good  deeds  should  die, 
Through  tract  of  years  in  mute  oblivion  lost, 
This  slender  tomb  of  turf  hath  Irus  reared, 
Cheap  monument  of  no  ungrudging  hand, 
And  with  short  verse  inscribed  it,  to  attest, 
In  long  and  lasting  union  to  attest, 
The  virtues  of  the  beggar  and  his  dog." 

These  dim  eyes  have  in  vain  explored  for  some  months 
past  a  well-known  figure,  or  part  of  the  figure,  of  a  man, 
who  used  to  glide  his  comely  upper,  half  over  the  pave- 
ments of  London,  wheeling  along  with  most  ingenious 
celerity  upon  a  machine  of  wood,  a  spectacle  to  natives, 
to  foreigners,  and  to  children.  He  was  of  a  robust  make, 
with  a  florid  sailorlike  complexion,  and  his  head  was  bare 


282  LAMB 

to  the  storm  and  sunshine.  He  was  a  natural  curiosity,  a 
speculation  to  the  scientific,  a  prodigy  to  the  simple.  The 
infant  would  stare  at  the  mighty  man  brought  down  to  his 
own  level.  The  common  cripple  would  despise  his  own 
pusillanimity,  viewing  the  hale  stoutness  and  hearty  heart 
of  this  half-limbed  giant.  Few  but  must  have  noticed  him, 
for  the  accident  which  brought  him  low  took  place  during 
the  riots  of  1780,  and  he  has  been  a  groundling  so  long. 
He  seemed  earth-born,  an  Antaeus,  and  to  suck  in  fresh 
vigour  from  the  soil  which  he  neighboured.  He  was  a 
grand  fragment;  as  good  as  an  Elgin  marble.  The  nature, 
which  should  have  recruited  his  reft  legs  and  thighs,  was 
not  lost,  but  only  retired  into  his  upper  parts,  and  he  was 
half  a  Hercules.  I  heard  a  tremendous  voice  thundering 
and  growling,  as  before  an  earthquake,  and  casting  down 
my  eyes,  it  was  this  mandrake  reviling  a  steed  that  had 
started  at  his  portentous  appearance.  He  seemed  to  want 
but  his  just  stature  to  have  rent  the  offending  quadruped 
in  shivers.  He  was  as  the  man-part  of  a  centaur,  from 
which  the  horse-half  had  been  cloven  in  some  dire  Lapithan 
controversy.  He  moved  on,  as  if  he  could  have  made  shift 
with  yet  half  of  the  body  portion  which  was  left  him.  The 
os  sublime  was  not  wanting,  and  he  threw  out  yet  a  jolly 
countenance  upon  the  heavens.  Forty-and-two  years  had 
he  driven  this  out-of-door  trade,  and  now  that  his  hair  is 
grizzled  in  the  service,  but  his  good  spirits  no  way  impaired, 
because  he  is  not  content  to  exchange  his  free  air  and  ex- 
ercise for  the  restraints  of  a  poor-house,  he  is  expiating  his 
contumacy  in  one  of  those  houses  (ironically  christened) 
of  correction. 

Was  a  daily  spectacle  like  this  to  be  deemed  a  nuisance, 
which  called  for  legal  interference  to  remove?  or  not  rather 
a  salutary  and  a  touching  object  to  the  passers-by  in  a 
great  city?  Among  her  shows,  her  museums,  and  supplies 
for  ever-gaping  curiosity  (and  what  else  but  an  accumula- 
tion of  sights — endless  sights — is  a  great  city?  or  for  what 
else  is  it  desirable?)  was  there  not  room  for  one  Lusus  (not 
Naturae,  indeed,  but)  Accidentium?  What  if  in  forty-and- 
two-years'  going  about  the  man  had  scraped  together 
enough  to  give  a  portion  to  his  child  (as  the  rumour  ran) 
of  a  few  hundreds — whom  had  he  injured? — whom  had  he 


CHARLES  LAMB 
From  an  etching  after  a  painting  by  Henry  Meyer 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS   283 

imposed  upon?  The  contributors  had  enjoyed  their  sight 
for  their  pennies.  What  if  after  being  exposed  all  day  to 
the  heats,  the  rains,  and  the  frosts  of  heaven — shuffling  his 
ungainly  trunk  along  in  an  elaborate  and  painful  motion — 
he  was  enabled  to  retire  at  night  to  enjoy  himself  at  a  club 
of  his  fellow  cripples  over  a  dish  of  hot  meat  and  vegetables, 
as  the  charge  was  gravely  brought  against  him  by  a  clergy- 
man deposing  before  a  House  of  Commons'  committee — 
was  this,  or  was  his  truly  paternal  consideration,  which  (if 
a  fact)  deserved  a  statue  rather  than  a  whipping-post,  and 
is  inconsistent,  at  least,  with  the  exaggeration  of  nocturnal 
orgies  which  he  has  been  slandered  with — a  reason  that 
he  should  be  deprived  of  his  chosen,  harmless,  nay,  edify- 
ing way  of  life,  and  be  committed  in  hoary  age  for  a  sturdy 
vagabond? 

There  was  a  Yorick  once  whom  it  would  not  have 
shamed  to  have  sat  down  at  the  cripples'  feast,  and  to 
have  thrown  in  his  benediction,  ay,  and  his  mite  too,  for 
a  companionable  symbol.  "  Age,  thou  hast  lost  thy  breed." 

Half  of  these  stories  about  the  prodigious  fortunes  made 
by  begging  are  (I  verily  believe)  misers'  calumnies.  One 
was  much  talked  of  in  the  public  papers  some  time  since, 
and  the  usual  charitable  inferences  deduced.  A  clerk  in 
the  bank  was  surprised  with  the  announcement  of  a  five- 
hundred-pound  legacy  left  him  by  a  person  whose  name  he 
was  a  stranger  to.  It  seems  that  in  his  daily  morning  walks 
from  Peckham  (or  some  village  thereabouts)  where  he 
lived,  to  his  office,  it  had  been  his  practice  for  the  last 
twenty  years  to  drop  his  halfpenny  duly  into  the  hat  of 
some  blind  Bartimeus  that  sat  begging  alms  by  the  way- 
side in  the  borough.  The  good  old  beggar  recognised  his 
daily  benefactor  by  the  voice  only,  and  when  he  died  left 
all  the  amassings  of  his  alms  (that  had  been  half  a  century, 
perhaps,  in  the  accumulating)  to  his  old  bank  friend.  Was 
this  a  story  to  purse  up  people's  hearts  and  pennies  against 
giving  an  alms  to  the  blind?  or  not  rather  a  beautiful  moral 
of  well-directed  charity  on  the  one  part,  and  noble  grati- 
tude upon  the  other? 

I  sometimes  wish  I  had  been  that  bank  clerk. 

I  seem  to  remember  a  poor  old  grateful  kind  of  crea- 
ture, blinking,  and  looking  up  with  his  no  eyes  in  the  sun. 


284 


LAMB 


Is  it  possible  I  could  have  steeled  my  purse  against  him? 

Perhaps  I  had  no  small  change. 

Reader,  do  not  be  frightened  at  the  hard  words  impo- 
sition, imposture — give,  and  ask  no  questions.  Cast  thy 
bread  upon  the  waters.  Some  have  unawares  (like  this 
bank  clerk)  entertained  angels. 

Shut  not  thy  purse-strings  always  against  painted  dis- 
tress. Act  a  charity  sometimes.  When  a  poor  creature 
(outwardly  and  visibly  such)  comes  before  thee,  do  not 
stay  to  inquire  whether  the  "  seven  small  children,"  in 
whose  name  he  implores  thy  assistance,  have  a  veritable  ex- 
istence. Rake  not  into  the  bowels  of  unwelcome  truth  to 
save  a  halfpenny.  It  is  good  to  believe  him.  If  he  be  not 
all  that  he  pretendeth,  give,  and  under  a  personate  father 
of  a  family,  think  (if  thou  pleasest)  that  thou  hast  relieved 
an  indigent  bachelor.  When  they  come  with  their  counter- 
feit looks,  and  mumping  tones,  think  them  players.  You 
pay  your  money  to  see  a  comedian  feign  these  things, 
which,  concerning  these  poor  people,  thou  canst  not  cer- 
tainly tell  whether  they  are  feigned  or  not. 

["  Pray  God,  your  honour,  relieve  me,"  said  a  poor 

beadswoman  to  my  friend  L one  day;  "  I  have  seen 

better  days."  "  So  have  I,  my  good  woman,"  retorted  he, 
looking  up  at  the  welkin,  which  was  just  then  threatening  a 
storm — and  the  jest  (he  will  have  it)  was  as  good  to  the 
beggar  as  a  tester.  It  was,  at  all  events,  kinder  than  con- 
signing her  to  the  stocks,  or  the  parish  beadle. 

But  L has  a  way  of  viewing  things  in  rather  a  para- 
doxical light  on  some  occasions.] 


THE  CONVALESCENT 

A  PRETTY  severe  fit  of  indisposition  which,  under  the 
name  of  a  nervous  fever,  has  made  a  prisoner  of 
me  for  some  weeks  past,  and  is  but  slowly  leaving 
me,  has  reduced  me  to  an  incapacity  of  reflecting  upon 
any  topic  foreign  to  itself.  Expect  no  healthy  conclusions 
from  me  this  month,  reader;  I  can  offer  you  only  sick 
men's  dreams. 

And  truly  the  whole  state  of  sickness  is  such;  for  what 
else  is  it  but  a  magnificent  dream  for  a  man  to  lie  a-bed 
and  draw  daylight  curtains  about  him;  and,  shutting  out 
the  sun,  to  induce  a  total  oblivion  of  all  the  works  which 
are  going  on  under  it?  To  become  insensible  to  all  the 
operations  of  life,  except  the  beatings  of  one  feeble 
pulse? 

If  there  be  a  regal  solitude,  it  is  a  sick-bed.  How  the 
patient  lords  it  there;  what  caprices  he  acts  without  con- 
trol! how  kinglike  he  sways  his  pillow — tumbling,  and 
tossing,  and  shifting,  and  lowering,  and  thumping,  and  flat- 
ting, and  moulding  it,  to  the  ever-varying  requisitions  of 
his  throbbing  temples! 

He  changes  sides  oftener  than  a  politician.  Now  he 
lies  full  length,  then  half  length,  obliquely,  transversely, 
head  and  feet  quite  across  the  bed;  and  none  accuses  him 
of  tergiversation.  Within  the  four  curtains  he  is  absolute. 
They  are  his  Mare  Clausum. 

How  sickness  enlarges  the  dimensions  of  a  man's  self  to 
himself!  he  is  his  own  exclusive  object.  Supreme  selfish- 
ness is  inculcated  upon  him  as  his  only  duty.  'Tis  the  "Two 
Tables  of  the  Law  "  to  him.  He  has  nothing  to  think  of 
but  how  to  get  well.  What  passes  out  of  doors,  or  within 
them,  so  he  hear  not  the  jarring  of  them,  affects  him  not. 

A  little  while  ago  he  was  greatly  concerned  in  the  event 

285 


286  LAMB 

of  a  lawsuit,  which  was  to  be  the  making  or  the  marring 
of  his  dearest  friend.  He  was  to  be  seen  trudging  about 
upon  this  man's  errand  to  fifty  quarters  of  the  town  at 
once,  jogging  this  witness,  refreshing  that  solicitor.  The 
cause  was  to  come  on  yesterday.  He  is  absolutely  as  in- 
different to  the  decision  as  if  it  were  a  question  to  be  tried 
at  Pekin.  Peradventure  from  some  whispering,  going  on 
about  the  house,  not  intended  for  his  hearing,  he  picks  up 
enough  to  make  him  understand  that  things  went  cross- 
grained  in  the  court  yesterday,  and  his  friend  is  ruined. 
But  the  word  "  friend,"  and  the  word  "  ruin,"  disturb  him 
no  more  than  so  much  jargon.  He  is  not  to  think  of 
anything  but  how  to  get  better. 

What  a  world  of  foreign  cares  are  merged  in  that  ab- 
sorbing consideration! 

He  has  put  on  the  strong  armour  of  sickness,  he  is 
wrapped  in  the  callous  hide  of  suffering;  he  keeps  his 
sympathy,  like  some  curious  vintage,  under  trusty  lock  and 
key,  for  his  own  use  only. 

He  lies  pitying  himself,  honing  and  moaning  to  him- 
self; he  yearneth  over  himself;  his  bowels  are  even  melted 
within  him,  to  think  what  he  suffers;  he  is  not  ashamed  to 
weep  over  himself. 

He  is  forever  plotting  how  to  do  some  good  to  himself; 
studying  little  stratagems  and  artificial  alleviations. 

He  makes  the  most  of  himself;  dividing  himself,  by  an 
allowable  fiction,  into  as  many  distinct  individuals  as  he 
hath  sore  and  sorrowing  members.  Sometimes  he  medi- 
tates— as  of  a  thing  apart  from  him — upon  his  poor  aching 
head,  and  that  dull  pain  which,  dozing  or  waking,  lay  in 
it  all  the  past  night  like  a  log,  or  palpable  substance  of  pain, 
not  to  be  removed  without  opening  the  very  skull,  as  it 
seemed,  to  take  it  thence.  Or  he  pities  his  long,  clammy, 
attenuated  fingers.  He  compassionates  himself  all  over, 
and  his  bed  is  a  very  discipline  of  humanity  and  tender 
heart. 

He  is  his  own  sympathizer,  and  instinctively  feels  that 
none  can  so  well  perform  that  office  for  him.  He  cares 
for  few  spectators  to  his  tragedy.  Only  that  punctual  face 
of  the  old  nurse  pleases  him,  that  announces  his  broths  and 
his  cordials.  He  likes  it  because  it  is  so  unmoved,  and 


THE   CONVALESCENT  287 

because  he  can  pour  forth  his  feverish  ejaculations  before 
it  as  unreservedly  as  to  his  bed-post. 

To  the  world's  business  he  is  dead.  He  understands 
not  what  the  callings  and  occupations  of  mortals  are;  only 
he  has  a  glimmering  conceit  of  some  such  thing  when  the 
doctor  makes  his  daily  call;  and  even  in  the  lines  on  that 
busy  face  he  reads  no  multiplicity  of  patients,  but  solely 
conceives  of  himself  as  the  sick  man.  To  what  other  un- 
easy couch  the  good  man  is  hastening  when  he  slips  out  of 
his  chamber,  folding  up  his  thin  douceur  so  carefully,  for 
fear  of  rustling — is  no  speculation  which  he  can  at  present 
entertain.  He  thinks  only  of  the  regular  return  of  the  same 
phenomenon  at  the  same  hour  to-morrow. 

Household  rumours  touch  him  not.  Some  faint  mur- 
mur, indicative  of  life  going  on  within  the  house,  soothes 
him,  while  he  knows  not  distinctly  what  it  is.  He  is  not 
to  know  anything,  not  to  think  of  anything.  Servants 
gliding  up  or  down  the  distant  staircase,  treading  as  upon 
velvet,  gently  keep  his  ear  awake,  so  long  as  he  troubles 
not  himself  further  than  with  some  feeble  guess  at  their 
errands.  Exacter  knowledge  would  be  a  burden  to  him; 
he  can  just  endure  the  pressure  of  conjecture.  He  opens 
his  eye  faintly  at  the  dull  stroke  of  the  muffled  knocker,  and 
closes  it  again  without  asking  "  Who  was  it?  "  He  is  flat- 
tered by  a  general  notion  that  inquiries  are  making  after 
him,  but  he  cares  not  to  know  the  name  of  the  inquirer.  In 
the  general  stillness  and  awful  hush  of  the  house  he  lies 
in  state,  and  feels  his  sovereignty. 

To  be  sick  is  to  enjoy  monarchal  prerogatives.  Com- 
pare the  silent  tread  and  quiet  ministry,  almost  by  the 
eye  only,  with  which  he  is  served — with  the  careless  de- 
meanour, the  unceremonious  goings  in  and  out  (slapping 
of  doors,  or  leaving  them  open)  of  the  very  same  attend- 
ants, when  he  is  getting  a  little  better — and  you  will  con- 
fess that  from  the  bed  of  sickness  (throne  let  me  rather 
call  it)  to  the  elbow-chair  of  convalescence  is  a  fall  from 
dignity,  amounting  to  a  deposition. 

How  convalescence  shrinks  a  man  back  to  his  pristine 
stature!  Where  is  now  the  space  which  he  occupied  so 
lately  in  his  own,  in  the  family's  eye? 

The  scene  of  his  regalities,  his  sick-room,  which  was  his 


288  LAMB 

presence-chamber,  where  he  lay  and  acted  his  despotic 
fancies — how  is  it  reduced  to  a  common  bedroom!  The 
trimness  of  the  very  bed  has  something  petty  and  unmean- 
ing about  it.  It  is  made  every  day.  How  unlike  to  that 
wavy,  many-furrowed,  oceanic  surface,  which  it  presented 
so  short  a  time  since,  when  to  make  it  was  a  service  not 
to  be  thought  of  at  oftener  than  three  or  four  day  revolu- 
tions, when  the  patient  was  with  pain  and  grief  to  be  lifted 
for  a  little  while  out  of  it,  to  submit  to  the  encroachments 
of  unwelcome  neatness,  and  decencies  which  his  shaken 
frame  deprecated;  then  to  be  lifted  into  it  again,  for  an- 
other three  or  four  days'  respite,  to  flounder  it  out  of  shape 
again,  while  every  fresh  furrow  was  a  historical  record  of 
some  shifting  posture,  some  uneasy  turning,  some  seeking 
for  a  little  ease;  and  the  shrunken  skin  scarce  told  a  truer 
story  than  the  crumpled  coverlid. 

Hushed  are  those  mysterious  sighs — those  groans — so 
much  more  awful  while  we  knew  not  from  what  caverns  of 
vast  hidden  suffering  they  proceeded.  The  Lernean  pangs 
are  quenched.  The  riddle  of  sickness  is  solved,  and  Phi- 
loctetes  is  become  an  ordinary  personage. 

Perhaps  some  relic  of  the  sick  man's  dream  of  greatness 
survives  in  the  still  lingering  visitations  of  the  medical 
attendant.  But  how  is  he,  too,  changed  with  everything 
else!  Can  this  be  he — this  man  of  news,  of  chat,  of  anec- 
dote, of  everything  but  physic — can  this  be  he  who  so 
lately  came  between  the  patient  and  his  cruel  enemy,  as  on 
some  solemn  embassy  from  Nature,  erecting  herself  into 
a  high  mediating  party?  Pshaw!  'tis  some  old  woman. 

Farewell  with  him  all  that  made  sickness  pompous;  the 
spell  that  hushed  the  household;  the  desertlike  stillness,  felt 
throughout  its  inmost  chambers;  the  mute  attendance; 
the  inquiry  by  looks;  the  still  softer  delicacies  of  self-atten- 
tion; the  sole  and  single  eye  of  distemper  alonely  fixed 
upon  itself;  world-thoughts  excluded;  the  man  a  world 
unto  himself,  his  own  theatre — 

"  What  a  speck  is  he  dwindled  into!  " 

In  this  flat  swamp  of  convalescence,  left  by  the  ebb  of 
sickness,  yet  far  enough  from  the  terra-firma  of  established 
health,  your  note,  dear  editor,  reached  me,  requesting — an 


THE   CONVALESCENT 


289 


article.  In  Articulo  Mortis,  thought  I;  but  it  is  something 
hard,  and  the  quibble,  wretched  as  it  was,  relieved  me. 
The  summons,  unseasonable  as  it  appeared,  seemed  to  link 
me  on  again  to  the  petty  businesses  of  life,  which  I  had 
lost  sight  of;  a  gentle  call  to  activity,  however  trivial;  a 
wholesome  weaning  from  that  preposterous  dream  of  self- 
absorption — the  puffy  state  of  sickness — in  which  I  confess 
to  have  lain  so  long,  insensible  to  the  magazines  and  mon- 
archies of  the  world  alike;  to  its  laws,  and  to  its  literature. 
The  hypochondriac  flatus  is  subsiding;  the  acres,  which  in 
imagination  I  had  spread  over — for  the  sick  man  swells  in 
the  sole  contemplation  of  his  single  sufferings,  till  he  be- 
comes a  Tityus  to  himself — are  wasting  to  a  span;  and  for 
the  giant  of  self-importance,  which  I  was  so  lately,  you 
have  me  once  again  in  my  natural  pretensions — the  lean 
and  meagre  figure  of  your  insignificant  Essayist. 


RURAL  FUNERALS 

BY 

WASHINGTON   IRVING 


OF  purely  literary  writers,  WASHINGTON  IRVING  was  the  earliest  Ameri- 
can whose  works  are  permanent  and  classic.  He  was  born  in  New  York 
city,  April  3,  1783.  Leaving  school  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  he  studied  law  ; 
but  his  natural  bent  for  literature  was  so  strong  that  he  could  hardly 
think  seriously  of  any  other  profession.  He  began  writing  at  the  age  of 
nineteen,  using  the  pen-name  Jonathan  Oldstyle.  A  few  years  later  he 
travelled  in  Europe  for  his  health,  became  intimate  with  Washington 
Allston  in  Rome,  and  made  a  feeble  attempt  to  learn  painting.  On  his 
return  home,  with  his  brother  William  and  James  K.  Paulding  he  began 
a  serial  entitled  "  Salmagundi,"  the  humour  and  local  allusions  of  which 
insured  its  success.  In  1809  he  published  his  humorous  "  History  of 
New  York,"  four  years  later  edited  a  magazine  in  Philadelphia,  and  in 
1815  became  a  silent  partner  in  his  brother's  mercantile  house  and  sailed 
for  Europe.  The  house  soon  became  bankrupt,  and  Irving  then  turned 
seriously  to  literature  for  a  livelihood.  He  now  wrote  'the  essays  that 
form  the  "  Sketch  Book  " — one  of  which  is  here  presented — and  sent  them 
home  to  New  York,  where  they  were  published  in  pamphlet  numbers  in 
1818.  He  had  difficulty  in  getting  the  book  published  in  London,  till 
Scott  persuaded  Murray  to  take  it.  This  was  so  successful  that  when  he 
produced  his  next  book,  "  Bracebridge  Hall,"  Murray  paid  one  thousand 
guineas  for  the  copyright  without  seeing  the  manuscript ;  and  for  the 
next  book,  "  Tales  of  a  Traveller,"  he  paid  fifteen  hundred  pounds. 
These  were  large  prices  for  those  days.  Irving  was  employed  to  translate 
documents  relating  to  Columbus  which  had  been  collected  by  Navar- 
rete,  and  then  wrote  his  "Life  of  Columbus,"  for  which  he  received  three 
thousand  guineas  from  the  publisher,  and  the  gold  medal  offered  by 
George  IV  for  historical  composition.  He  was  appointed  Secretary  of 
the  American  legation  in  London  in  1829,  and  from  1842  to  1846  he  was 
Minister  at  Madrid.  His  Spanish  studies  had  resulted  in  "The  Alham- 
bra  "  and  other  books,  and  after  his  return  home  he  wrote  several  relating 
to  the  far  West.  His  last  and  most  elaborate  work  was  the  "  Life  of 
Washington,"  the  final  volume  of  which  appeared  only  three  months 
before  his  death,  which  occurred  at  his  home  on  the  Hudson,  November 
28,  1859. 


RURAL  FUNERALS 

"  Here's  a  few  flowers;  but  about  midnight,  more: 
The  herbs  that  have  on  them  cold  dew  o'  the  night 
Are  strewings  fitt'st  for  graves — 
You  were  as  flowers,  now  withered:  even  so 
These  herb'lets  shall,  which  we  upon  you  strow." 

(Cymbeline.) 

A^tONG  the  beautiful  and  simple-hearted  customs  of 
rural  life  which  still  linger  in  some  parts  of  Eng- 
land are  those  of  strewing  flowers  before  the  funer- 
als and  planting  them  at  the  graves  of  departed  friends. 
These,  it  is  said,  are  the  remains  of  some  of  the  rites  of 
the  primitive  church;  but  they  are  of  still  higher  an- 
tiquity, having  been  observed  among  the  Greeks  and 
Romans,  and  frequently  mentioned  by  their  writers,  and 
were,  no  doubt,  the  spontaneous  tributes  of  unlettered 
affection,  originating  long  before  art  had  tasked  itself  to 
modulate  sorrow  into  song  or  story  it  on  the  monument. 
They  are  now  only  to  be  met  with  in  the  most  distant  and 
retired  places  of  the  kingdom,  where  fashion  and  innova- 
tion have  not  been  able  to  throng  in  and  trample  out  all 
the  curious  and  interesting  traces  of  the  olden  time. 

In  Glamorganshire,  we  are  told,  the  bed  whereon  the 
corpse  lies  is  covered  with  flowers,  a  custom  alluded  to  in 
one  of  the  wild  and  plaintive  ditties  of  Ophelia: 

"  White  his  shroud  as  the  mountain  snow, 

Larded  all  with  sweet  flowers; 
Which  be-wept  to  the  grave  did  go, 
With  true  love  showers." 

There  is  also  a  most  delicate  and  beautiful  rite  ob- 
served in  some  of  the  remote  villages  of  the  south  at  the 
funeral  of  a  female  who  has  died  young  and  unmarried. 
A  chaplet  of  white  flowers  is  borne  before  the  corpse  by 
a  young  girl,  nearest  in  age,  size,  and  resemblance,  and 
19  293 


294  IRVING 

is  afterward  hung  up  in  the  church  over  the  accustomed 
seat  of  the  deceased.  These  chaplets  are  sometimes  made 
of  white  paper,  in  imitation  of  flowers,  and  inside  of  them 
is  generally  a  pair  of  white  gloves.  They  are  intended 
as  emblems  of  the  purity  of  the  deceased,  and  the  crown 
of  glory  which  she  has  received  in  heaven. 

In  some  parts  of  the  country,  also,  the  dead  are  car- 
ried to  the  grave  with  the  singing  of  psalms  and  hymns; 
a  kind  of  triumph,  "  to  show,"  says  Bourne,  "  that  they 
have  finished  their  course  with  joy,  and  are  become  con- 
querors." This,  I  am  informed,  is  observed  in  some  of 
the  northern  counties,  particularly  in  Northumberland, 
and  it  has  a  pleasing  though  melancholy  effect  to  hear, 
of  a  still  evening,  in  some  lonely  country  scene,  the 
mournful  melody  of  a  funeral  dirge  swelling  from  a  dis- 
tance and  to  see  the  train  slowly  moving  along  the  land- 
scape : 

"  Thus,  thus,  and  thus,  we  compass  round 

Thy  harmless  and  unhaunted  ground, 

And  as  we  sing  thy  dirge,  we  will 

The  daffodil 

And  other  flowers  lay  upon 

The  altar  of  our  love,  thy  stone."    (Herrick.) 

There  is  also  a  solemn  respect  paid  by  the  traveller  to 
the  passing  funeral  in  these  sequestered  places;  for  such 
spectacles,  occurring  among  the  quiet  abodes  of  Nature, 
sink  deep  into  the  soul.  As  the  mourning  train  ap- 
proaches he  pauses,  uncovered,  to  let  it  go  by;  he  then 
follows  silently  in  the  rear;  sometimes  quite  to  the  grave, 
at  other  times  for  a  few  hundred  yards,  and,  having  paid 
this  tribute  of  respect  to  the  deceased,  turns  and  resumes 
his  journey. 

The  rich  vein  of  melancholy  which  runs  through  the 
English  character,  and  gives  it  some  of  its  most  touching 
and  ennobling  graces,  is  finely  evidenced  in  these  pathetic 
customs,  and  in  the  solicitude  shown  by  the  common  peo- 
ple for  an  honoured  and  a  peaceful  grave.  The  humblest 
peasant,  whatever  may  be  his  lowly  lot  while  living,  is 
anxious  that  some  little  respect  may  be  paid  to  his  re- 
mains. Sir  Thomas  Overbury,  describing  the  "  faire  and 
happy  milkmaid,"  observes,  "  Thus  lives  she,  and  all  her 
care  is  that  she  may  die  in  the  springtime,  to  have  store 


RURAL   FUNERALS  295 

of  flowers  stucke  upon  her  winding-sheet."  The  poets, 
too,  who  always  breathe  the  feeling  of  a  nation,  contin- 
ually advert  to  this  fond  solicitude  about  the  grave.  In 
'  The  Maid's  Tragedy,"  by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  there 
is  a  beautiful  instance  of  the  kind  describing  the  capricious 
melancholy  of  a  broken-hearted  girl: 

"  When  she  sees  a  bank 

Stuck  full  of  flowers,  she,  with  a  sigh,  will  tell 
Her  servants,  what  a  pretty  place  it  were 
To  bury  lovers  in;  and  made  her  maids 
Pluck  'em,  and  strew  her  over  like  a  corse." 

The  custom  of  decorating  graves  was  once  universally 
prevalent:  osiers  were  carefully  bent  over  them  to  keep 
the  turf  uninjured,  and  about  them  were  planted  ever- 
greens and  flowers.  "  We  adorn  their  graves,"  says  Eve- 
lyn in  his  "  Sylva,"  "  with  flowers  and  redolent  plants, 
just  emblems  of  the  life  of  man,  which  has  been  compared 
in  holy  Scriptures  to  those  fading  beauties  whose  roots, 
being  buried  in  dishonour,  rise  again  in  glory."  This 
usage  has  now  become  extremely  rare  in  England;  but 
it  may  still  be  met  with  in  the  churchyards  of  retired  vil- 
lages among  the  Welsh  mountains;  and  I  recollect  an  in- 
stance of  it  at  the  small  town  of  Ruthven,  which  lies  at 
the  head  of  the  beautiful  vale  of  Clewyd.  I  have  been  told 
also  by  a  friend,  who  was  present  at  the  funeral  of  a  young 
girl  in  Glamorganshire,  that  the  female  attendants  had 
their  aprons  full  of  flowers,  which,  as  soon  as  the  body 
was  interred,  they  stuck  about  the  grave. 

He  noticed  several  graves  which  had  been  decorated 
in  the  same  manner.  As  the  flowers  had  been  merely 
stuck  in  the  ground,  and  not  planted,  they  had  soon  with- 
ered, and  might  be  seen  in  various  states  of  decay:  some 
drooping,  other  quite  perished.  They  were  afterward  to 
be  supplanted  by  holly,  rosemary,  and  other  evergreens; 
which  on  some  graves  had  grown  to  great  luxuriance,  and 
overshadowed  the  tombstones. 

There  was  formerly  a  melancholy  fancifulness  in  the 
arrangement  of  these  rustic  offerings  that  had  something 
in  it  truly  poetical.  The  rose  was  sometimes  blended  with 
the  lily,  to  form  a  general  emblem  of  frail  mortality. 
"  This  sweet  flower,"  said  Evelyn,  "  borne  on  a  branch  set 


296 


IRVING 


with  thorns,  and  accompanied  with  the  lily,  are  natural 
hieroglyphics  of  our  fugitive,  umbratile,  anxious,  and 
transitory  life,  which,  making  so  fair  a  show  for  a  time, 
is  not  yet  without  its  thorns  and  crosses."  The  nature 
and  colour  of  the  flowers,  and  of  the  ribbons  with  which 
they  were  tied,  had  often  a  particular  reference  to  the 
qualities  or  story  of  the  deceased,  or  were  expressive  of 
the  feelings  of  the  mourner.  In  an  old  poem,  entitled 
"  Corydon's  Doleful  Knell,"  a  lover  specifies  the  decora- 
tions he  intends  to  use: 

"  A  garland  shall  be  framed 

By  Art  and  Nature's  skill, 
Of  sundry  coloured  flowers, 
In  token  of  good-will. 

"  And  sundry  coloured  ribbons 

On  it  I  will  bestow; 
But  chiefly  blacke  and  yellowe 
With  her  to  grave  shall  go. 

"  I'll  deck  her  tomb  with  flowers 

The  rarest  ever  seen ; 
And  with  my  tears  as  showers 
I'll  keep  them  fresh  and  green." 

The  white  rose,  we  are  told,  was  planted  at  the  grave 
of  a  virgin;  her  chaplet  was  tied  with  white  ribbons,  in 
token  of  her  spotless  innocence,  though  sometimes  black 
ribbons  were  intermingled,  to  bespeak  the  grief  of  the  sur- 
vivors. The  red  rose  was  occasionally  used,  in  remem- 
brance of  such  as  had  been  remarkable  for  benevolence; 
but  roses  in  general  were  appropriated  to  the  graves  of 
lovers.  Evelyn  tells  us  that  the  custom  was  not  alto- 
gether extinct  in  his  time,  near  his  dwelling  in  the  county 
of  Surrey,  "  where  the  maidens  yearly  planted  and  decked 
the  graves  of  their  defunct  sweethearts  with  rose  bushes." 
And  Camden  likewise  remarks,  in  his  "  Britannia  ":  "  Here 
is  also  a  certain  custom,  observed  time  out  of  mind,  of 
planting  rose  trees  upon  the  graves,  especially  by  the 
young  men  and  maids  who  have  lost  their  loves;  so  that 
this  churchyard  is  now  full  of  them." 

When  the  deceased  had  been  unhappy  in  their  loves, 
emblems  of  a  more  gloomy  character  were  used,  such  as 
the  yew  and  cypress;  and  if  flowers  were  strewed,  they 


RURAL   FUNERALS  297 

were  of  the  most  melancholy  colours.  Thus,  in  poems 
by  Thomas  Stanley,  Esq.  (published  in  1651),  is  the  fol- 
lowing stanza: 

"  Yet  strew 

Upon  my  dismall  grave 
Such  offerings  as  you  have, 

Forsaken  cypresse  and  yewe; 
For  kinder  flowers  can  take  no  birth 
Or  growth  from  such  unhappy  earth." 

In  "  The  Maid's  Tragedy,"  a  pathetic  little  air  is  in- 
troduced, illustrative  of  this  mode  of  decorating  the  fu- 
nerals of  females  who  have  been  disappointed  in  love: 

"  Lay  a  garland  on  my  hearse 

Of  the  dismal  yew, 
Maidens  willow  branches  wear, 
Say  I  died  true. 

"  My  love  was  false,  but  I  was  firm, 

From  my  hour  of  birth, 
Upon  my  buried  body  lie 
Lightly,  gentle  earth." 

The  natural  effect  of  sorrow  over  the  dead  is  to  refine 
and  elevate  the  mind;  and  we  have  a  proof  of  it  in  the 
purity  of  sentiment  and  the  unaffected  elegance  of 
thought  which  pervaded  the  whole  of  these  funeral  ob- 
servances. Thus  it  was  an  especial  precaution  that  none 
but  sweet-scented  evergreens  and  flowers  should  be  em- 
ployed. The  intention  seems  to  have  been  to  soften  the 
horrors  of  the  tomb,  to  beguile  the  mind  from  brooding 
over  the  disgraces  of  perishing  mortality,  and  to  associate 
the  memory  of  the  deceased  with  the  most  delicate  and 
beautiful  objects  in  Nature.  There  is  a  dismal  process 
going  on  in  the  grave  ere  dust  can  return  to  its  kindred 
dust,  which  the  imagination  shrinks  from  contemplating; 
and  we  seek  still  to  think  of  the  form  we  have  loved  with 
those  refined  associations  which  it  awakened  when  bloom- 
ing before  us  in  youth  and  beauty.  "  Lay  her  i'  the 
earth,"  says  Laertes  of  his  virgin  sister, 

"  And  from  her  fair  and  unpolluted  flesh 
May  violets  spring." 

Herrick  also,  in  his  "  Dirge  of  Jephtha,"  pours  forth  a 
fragrant  flow  of  poetical  thought  and  image,  which  in  a 


298 


IRVING 


manner  embalms   the   dead  in   the   recollections   of   the 

living: 

"  Sleep  in  thy  peace,  thy  bed  of  spice, 
And  make  this  place  all  paradise: 
May  sweets  grow  here!  and  smoke  from  hence 

Fat  frankincense. 

Let  balme  and  cassia  send  their  scent 
From  out  thy  maiden  monument. 

May  all  shie  maids  at  wonted  hours 
Come  forth  to  strew  thy  tombe  with  flowers! 
May  virgins,  when  they  come  to  mourn, 
Male  incense  burn 
Upon  thine  altar!  then  return 
And  leave  thee  sleeping  in  thy  urn." 

I  might  crowd  my  pages  with  extracts  from  the  older 
British  poets,  who  wrote  when  these  rites  were  more  prev- 
alent, and  delighted  frequently  to  allude  to  them;  but  I 
have  already  quoted  more  than  is  necessary.  I  can  not, 
however,  refrain  from  giving  a  passage  from  Shakespeare, 
even  though  it  should  appear  trite,  which  illustrates  the 
emblematical  meaning  often  conveyed  in  these  floral  trib- 
utes, and  at  the  same  time  possesses  that  magic  of  lan- 
guage and  appositeness  of  imagery  for  which  he  stands 
pre-eminent : 

"  With  fairest  flowers, 

While  summer  lasts,  and  I  live  here,  Fidele, 
I'll  sweeten  thy  sad  grave;  thou  shalt  not  lack 
The  flower  that's  like  thy  face,  pale  primrose;  nor 
The  azured  harebell  like  thy  veins;  no,  nor 
The  leaf  of  eglantine;  whom  not  to  slander, 
Outsweetened  not  thy  breath." 

There  is  certainly  something  more  affecting  in  these 
prompt  and  spontaneous  offerings  of  Nature  than  in  the 
most  costly  monuments  of  art;  the  hand  strews  the  flower 
while  the  heart  is  warm,  and  the  tear  falls  on  the  grave 
as  affection  is  binding  the  osier  round  the  sod;  but  pathos 
expires  under  the  slow  labour  of  the  chisel,  and  is  chilled 
among  the  cold  conceits  of  sculptured  marble. 

It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  a  custom  so  truly 
elegant  and  touching  has  disappeared  from  general  use, 
and  exists  only  in  the  most  remote  and  insignificant  vil- 
lages. But  it  seems  as  if  poetical  custom  always  shuns 
the  walks  of  cultivated  society.  In  proportion  as  people 
grow  polite  they  cease  to  be  poetical.  They  talk  of 


RURAL   FUNERALS  299 

poetry,  but  they  have  learned  to  check  its  free  impulses, 
to  distrust  its  sallying  emotions,  and  to  supply  its  most 
affecting  and  picturesque  usages,  by  studied  form  and 
pompous  ceremonial.  Few  pageants  can  be  more  stately 
and  frigid  than  an  English  funeral  in  town.  It  is  made 
up  of  show  and  gloomy  parade:  mourning  carriages, 
mourning  horses,  mourning  plumes,  and  hireling  mourn- 
ers, who  make  a  mockery  of  grief.  "  There  is  a  grave 
digged,"  says  Jeremy  Taylor,  "  and  a  solemn  mourning, 
and  a  great  talk  in  the  neighbourhood,  and  when  the  daies 
are  finished,  they  shall  be,  and  they  shall  be  remembered 
no  more."  The  associate  in  the  gay  and  crowded  city 
is  soon  forgotten:  the  hurrying  succession  of  new  inti- 
mates and  new  pleasures  effaces  him  from  our  minds,  and 
the  very  scenes  and  circles  in  which  he  moved  are  inces- 
santly fluctuating.  But  funerals  in  the  country  are  sol- 
emnly impressive.  The  stroke  of  death  makes  a  wider 
space  in  the  village  circle,  and  is  an  awful  event  in  the 
tranquil  uniformity  of  rural  life.  The  passing  bell  tolls  its 
knell  in  every  ear;  it  steals  with  its  pervading  melancholy 
over  hill  and  vale,  and  saddens  all  the  landscape. 

The  fixed  and  unchanging  features  of  the  country  also 
perpetuate  the  memory  of  the  friend  with  whom  we  once 
enjoyed  them;  who  was  the  companion  of  our  most  re- 
tired walks,  and  gave  animation  to  every  lonely  scene. 
His  idea  is  associated  with  every  charm  of  Nature:  we 
hear  his  voice  in  the  echo  which  he  once  delighted  to 
awaken;  his  spirit  haunts  the  grove  which  he  once  fre- 
quented; we  think  of  him  in  the  wild  upland  solitude 
or  amid  the  pensive  beauty  of  the  valley.  In  the  fresh- 
ness of  joyous  morning  we  remember  his  beaming  smiles 
and  bounding  gaiety;  and  when  sober  evening  returns, 
with  its  gathering  shadows  and  subduing  quiet,  we  call 
to  mind  many  a  twilight  hour  of  gentle  talk  and  sweet- 
souled  melancholy: 

"  Each  lonely  place  shall  him  restore, 

For  him  the  tear  be  duly  shed, 
Beloved,  till  life  can  charm  no  more, 
And  mourned  till  pity's  self  be  dead." 

Another  cause  that  perpetuates  the  memory  of  the 
deceased  in  the  country  is  that  the  grave  is  more  imme- 


300  IRVING 

diately  in  sight  of  the  survivors.  They  pass  it  on  their 
way  to  prayer;  it  meets  their  eyes  when  their  hearts  are 
softened  by  the  exercise  of  devotion;  they  linger  about  it 
on  the  Sabbath,  when  the  mind  is  disengaged  from  worldly 
cares,  and  most  disposed  to  turn  aside  from  present  pleas- 
ures and  loves,  and  to  sit  down  among  the  solemn  me- 
mentoes of  the  past.  In  North  Wales  the  peasantry  kneel 
and  pray  over  the  graves  of  their  deceased  friends  for  sev- 
eral Sundays  after  the  interment;  and  where  the  tender 
rite  of  strewing  and  planting  flowers  is  still  practised,  it 
is  always  renewed  on  Easter,  Whitsuntide,  and  other  fes- 
tivals, when  the  season  brings  the  companion  of  former 
festivity  more  vividly  to  mind.  It  is  also  invariably  per- 
formed by  the  nearest  relatives  and  friends;  no  menials 
nor  hirelings  are  employed,  and  if  a  neighbour  yields  as- 
sistance it  would  be  deemed  an  insult  to  offer  compen- 
sation. 

I  have  dwelt  upon  this  beautiful  rural  custom  be- 
cause, as  it  is  one  of  the  last,  so  is  it  one  of  the  holiest 
offices  of  love.  The  grave  is  the  ordeal  of  true  affection. 
It  is  there  that  the  divine  passion  of  the  soul  manifests 
its  superiority  to  the  instinctive  impulse  of  mere  animal 
attachment.  The  latter  must  be  continually  refreshed  and 
kept  alive  by  the  presence  of  its  object;  but  the  love  that 
is  seated  in  the  soul  can  live  on  long  remembrance.  The 
mere  inclinations  of  sense  languish  and  decline  with  the 
charms  which  excited  them,  and  turn  with  shuddering 
and  disgust  from  the  dismal  precincts  of  the  tomb;  but 
it  is  thence  that  truly  spiritual  affection  rises  purified  from 
every  sensual  desire,  and  returns,  like  a  holy  flame,  to 
illumine  and  sanctify  the  heart  of  the  survivor. 

The  sorrow  for  the  dead  is  the  only  sorrow  from  which 
we  refuse  to  be  divorced.  Every  other  wound  we  seek 
to  heal — every  other  affliction  to  forget;  but  this  wound 
we  consider  it  a  duty  to  keep  open — this  affliction  we 
cherish  and  brood  over  in  solitude.  Where  is  the  mother 
who  would  willingly  forget  the  infant  that  perished  like 
a  blossom  from  her  arms  though  every  recollection  is  a 
pang?  Where  is  the  child  that  would  willingly  forget 
the  most  tender  of  parents,  though  to  remember  be  but 
to  lament?  Who,  even  in  the  hour  of  agony,  would  for- 


RURAL   FUNERALS 


301 


get  the  friend  over  whom  he  mourns?  Who,  even  when 
the  tomb  is  closing  upon  the  remains  of  her  he  most  loved, 
when  he  feels  his  heart,  as  it  were,  crushed  in  the  closing 
of  its  portal,  would  accept  of  consolation  that  must  be 
bought  by  forgetfulness?  No,  the  love  which  survives 
the  tomb  is  one  of  the  noblest  attributes  of  the  soul.  If 
it  has  its  woes,  it  has  likewise  its  delights;  and  when  the 
overwhelming  burst  of  grief  is  calmed  into  the  gentle 
tear  of  recollection — when  the  sudden  anguish  and  the 
convulsive  agony  over  the  present  ruins  of  all  that  we 
most  loved,  is  softened  away  into  pensive  meditation  on 
all  that  it  was  in  the  days  of  its  loveliness — who  would 
root  out  such  a  sorrow  from  the  heart?  Though  it  may 
sometimes  throw  a  passing  cloud  over  the  bright  hour  of 
gaiety,  or  spread  a  deeper  sadness  over  the  hour  of  gloom, 
yet  who  would  exchange  it  even  for  the  song  of  pleasure 
or  the  burst  of  revelry?  No,  there  is  a  voice  from  the 
tomb  sweeter  than  song.  There  is  a  remembrance  of  the 
dead,  to  which  we  turn  even  from  the  charms  of  the  liv- 
ing. Oh,  the  grave! — the  grave!  It  buries  every  error — 
covers  every  defect  —  extinguishes  every  resentment! 
From  its  peaceful  bosom  spring  none  but  fond  regrets 
and  tender  recollections.  Who  can  look  down  upon  the 
grave  even  of  an  enemy  and  not  feel  a  compunctious 
throb  that  he  should  ever  have  warred  with  the  poor 
handful  of  earth  that  lies  mouldering  before  him? 

But  the  grave  of  those  we  loved — what  a  place  for 
meditation!  There  it  is  that  we  call  up  in  long  review 
the  whole  history  of  virtue  and  gentleness,  and  the  thou- 
sand endearments  lavished  upon  us  almost  unheeded  in 
the  daily  intercourse  of  intimacy — there  it  is  that  we 
dwell  upon  the  tenderness,  the  solemn,  awful  tenderness 
of  the  parting  scene.  The  bed  of  death,  with  all  its  stifled 
griefs — its  noiseless  attendance — its  mute,  watchful  assi- 
duities. The  last  testimonies  of  expiring  love!  The  feeble, 
fluttering,  thrilling— oh!  how  thrilling!— pressure  of  the 
hand.  The  last  fond  look  of  the  glazing  eye,  turning  upon 
us  even  from  the  threshold  of  existence.  The  faint,  falter- 
ing accents,  struggling  in  death  to  give  one  more  assur- 
ance of  affection! 

Ay,   go  to  the  grave  of  buried  love  and  meditate! 

20 


302  IRVING 

There  settle  the  account  with  thy  conscience  for  every 
past  benefit  unrequited,  every  past  endearment  unre- 
garded, of  that  departed  being,  who  can  never — never — 
never  return  to  be  soothed  by  thy  contrition! 

If  thou  art  a  child,  and  hast  ever  added  a  sorrow  to 
the  soul,  or  a  furrow  to  the  silvered  brow  of  an  affection- 
ate parent — if  thou  art  a  husband,  and  hast  ever  caused 
the  fond  bosom  that  ventured  its  whole  happiness  in  thy 
arms  to  doubt  one  moment  of  thy  kindness  or  thy  truth — 
if  thou  art  a  friend,  and  hast  ever  wronged,  in  thought, 
word,  or  deed,  the  spirit  that  generously  confided  in  thee 
— if  thou  art  a  lover  and  hast  ever  given  one  unmerited 
pang  to  that  true  heart  which  now  lies  cold  and  still 
beneath  thy  feet — then  be  sure  that  every  unkind  look, 
every  ungracious  word,  every  ungentle  action  will  come 
thronging  back  upon  thy  memory,  and  knocking  dole- 
fully at  thy  soul — then  be  sure  that  thou  wilt  lie  down 
sorrowing  and  repentant  on  the  grave,  and  utter  the  un- 
heard groan,  and  pour  the  unavailing  tear — more  deep, 
more  bitter,  because  unheard  and  unavailing. 

Then  weave  thy  chaplet  of  flowers  and  strew  the  beau- 
ties of  Nature  about  the  grave;  console  thy  broken  spirit, 
if  thou  canst,  with  these  tender  yet  futile  tributes  of  re- 
gret; but  take  warning  by  the  bitterness  of  this  thy  con- 
trite affliction  over  the  dead,  and  henceforth  be  more  faith- 
ful and  affectionate  in  the  discharge  of  thy  duties  to  the 
living. 


THOMAS    ELLWOOD 

BY 

JOHN   GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER,  the  Quaker  poet,  was  born  on  a  farm  in 
Haverhill,  Mass.,  December  7,  1807.  He  was  educated  at  the  academy 
of  his  native  town,  and  at  the  age  of  twenty-two  became  a  journalist  in 
Boston.  Then  he  took  charge  of  a  review  in  Hartford,  but  in  a  little 
while  returned  to  the  farm.  He  was  elected  to  the  Massachusetts  Legis- 
lature in  1835,  and  a  year  later  was  made  Secretary  of  the  American  Anti- 
slavery  Society,  and  went  to  Philadelphia  to  edit  the  "  Pennsylvania 
Freeman."  In  1840  he  settled  in  Amesbury,  Mass.,  which  was  thence- 
forth his  home.  He  was  identified  with  the  antislavery  cause  from  his 
young  manhood  till  American  slavery  was  abolished,  a  period  of  more 
than  thirty  years,  and  he  had  the  honour  of  being  mobbed  for  his  prin- 
ciples, just  escaping  with  his  life.  He  wrote  many  poems,  the  most 
striking  of  which  relate  to  slavery  and  the  civil  war,  but  the  domestic 
ones,  especially  "  Snow-Bound,"  are  perhaps  the  most  pleasing.  His 
popularity  as  a  poet  has  somewhat  obscured  the  fact  that  he  was  a  grace- 
ful and  vigorous  writer  of  prose,  the  best  of  which  is  in  his  volume  of 
"Old  Portraits  and  Modern  Sketches,"  from  which  the  essay  here  pre- 
sented is  taken  by  the  courtesy  of  Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  the 
publishers  of  his  works.  Whittier  died  in  Hampton  Falls,  N.  H.,  Sep- 
tember 7,  1892.  Holmes  says  of  him:  "All  through  Whittier's  writings 
the  spirit  of  trust  in  a  beneficent  order  of  things  and  a  loving  superin- 
tendence of  the  universe  shows  itself,  ever  hopeful,  ever  cheerful,  always 
looking  forward  to  a  happier,  brighter  era,  when  the  kingdom  of  heave* 
shall  be  established."  Whittier's  prose  works,  besides  the  volume  alre 
mentioned,  are,  "  Legends  of  New  England,"  "Justice  and  Expediency,  ' 
"  Leaves  from  Margaret  Smith's  Journal,"  and  "  Literary  Recreations." 


THOMAS  ELLWOOD 

COMMEND  us  to  autobiographies!  Give  us  the  veri- 
table notchings  of  Robinson  Crusoe  on  his  stick,  the 
indubitable  records  of  a  life  long  since  swallowed  up 
in  the  blackness  of  darkness,  traced  by  a  hand  the  very 
dust  of  which  has  become  undistinguishable.  The  foolish- 
est  egotist  who  ever  chronicled  his  daily  experiences,  his 
hopes  and  fears,  poor  plans  and  vain  Teachings  after  hap- 
piness, speaking  to  us  out  of  the  past,  and  thereby  giving 
us  to  understand  that  it  was  quite  as  real  as  our  present, 
is  in  no  mean  sort  our  benefactor,  and  commands  our  at- 
tention in  spite  of  his  folly.  We  are  thankful  for  the  very 
vanity  which  prompted  him  to  bottle  up  his  poor  records 
and  cast  them  into  the  great  sea  of  Time,  for  future  voy- 
agers to  pick  up.  We  note,  with  the  deepest  interest,  that 
in  him  too  was  enacted  that  miracle  of  a  conscious  exist- 
ence, the  reproduction  of  which  in  ourselves  awes  and 
perplexes  us.  He,  too,  had  a  mother;  he  hated  and  loved; 
ftjje  light  from  old-quenched  hearths  shone  over  him;  he 

«tced  in  the  sunshine  over  the  dust  of  those  who  had 
o  e  before  him,  just  as  we  are  now  walking  over  his. 
These  records  of  him  remain,  the  footmarks  of  a  long- 
extinct  life,  not  of  mere  animal  organism,  but  of  a  being 
ike  ourselves,  enabling  us,  by  studying  their  hieroglyphic 
significance,  to  decipher  and  see  clearly  into  the  mystery  of 
existence  centuries  ago.  The  dead  generations  live  again 
in  these  old  self-biographies.  Incidentally,  unintentionally, 
yet  in  the  simplest  and  most  natural  manner,  they  make  us 
familiar  with  all  the  phenomena  of  life  in  the  bygone  ages. 
We  are  brought  in  contact  with  actual  flesh-and-blood  men 
and  women,  not  the  ghostly  outline  figures  which  pass  for 
such  in  what  is  called  History.  The  horn  lantern  of  the 
biographer,  by  the  aid  of  which,  with  painful  minuteness, 

305 


306 


WHITTIER 


he  chronicled,  from  day  to  day,  his  own  outgoings  and  in- 
comings, making  visible  to  us  his  pitiful  wants,  labours, 
trials,  and  tribulations,  of  the  stomach  and  of  the  con- 
science, sheds,  at  times,  a  strong  clear  light  upon  contem- 
poraneous activities;  what  seemed  before  half  fabulous, 
rises  up  in  distinct  and  full  proportions;  we  look  at  states- 
men, philosophers,  and  poets,  with  the  eyes  of  those  who 
lived  perchance  their  next-door  neighbours,  and  sold  them 
beer  and  mutton  and  household  stuffs,  had  access  to  their 
kitchens,  and  took  note  of  the  fashion  of  their  wigs  and  the 
colour  of  their  breeches.  Without  some  such  light,  all  his- 
tory would  be  just  about  as  unintelligible  and  unreal  as  a 
dimly  remembered  dream. 

The  journals  of  the  early  Friends  or  Quakers  are  in  this 
respect  invaluable.  Little,  it  is  true,  can  be  said,  as  a  gen- 
eral thing,  of  their  literary  merits.  Their  authors  were 
plain,  earnest  men  and  women,  chiefly  intent  upon  the  sub- 
stance of  things,  and  having  withal  a  strong  testimony  to 
bear  against  carnal  wit  and  outside  show  and  ornament. 
Yet,  even  the  scholar  may  well  admire  the  power  of  certain 
portions  of  George  Fox's  "  Journal,"  where  a  strong  spirit 
clothes  its  utterance  in  simple,  downright  Saxon  words; 
the  quiet  and  beautiful  enthusiasm  of  Pennington;  the  tor- 
rent energy  of  Edward  Burrough;  the  serene  wisdom  of 
Penn;  the  logical  acuteness  of  Barclay;  the  honest  truth- 
fulness of  Sewell;  the  wit  and  humour  of  John  Roberts  (for 
even  Quakerism  had  its  apostolic  jokers  and  drab-coated 
Robert  Halls);  and  last,  not  least,  the  simple  beauty  of 
Woolman's  "  Journal,"  the  modest  record  of  a  life  of  good 
works  and  love. 

Let  us  look  at  the  "  Life  of  Thomas  Ellwood."  The 
book  before  us  is  a  hardly  used  Philadelphia  reprint,  bear- 
ing the  date  of  1775.  The  original  was  published  some 
sixty  years  before.  It  is  not  a  book  to  be  found  in  fashion- 
able libraries,  or  noticed  in  fashionable  reviews,  but  it  is 
none  the  less  deserving  of  attention. 

Ellwood  was  born  in  1639,  in  the  little  town  of  Crowell, 
in  Oxfordshire.  Old  Walter,  his  father,  was  of  "  gentle- 
manly lineage,"  and  held  a  commission  of  the  peace  under 
Charles  I.  One  of  his  most  intimate  friends  was  Isaac  Pen- 
nington, a  gentleman  of  estate  and  good  reputation,  whose 


THOMAS  ELLWOOD  307 

wife,  the  widow  of  Sir  John  Springette,  was  a  lady  of 
superior  endowments.  Her  only  daughter,  Gulielma,  was 
the  playmate  and  companion  of  Thomas.  On  making  this 
family  a  visit,  in  1658,  in  company  with  his  father,  he  was 
surprised  to  find  that  they  had  united  with  the  Quakers,  a 
sect  then  little  known,  and  everywhere  spoken  against. 
Passing  through  the  vista  of  nearly  two  centuries,  let  us 
cross  the  threshold,  and  look  with  the  eyes  of  young  Ell- 
wood  upon  this  Quaker  family.  It  will  doubtless  give  us  a 
good  idea  of  the  earnest  and  solemn  spirit  of  that  age  of 
religious  awakening. 

"  So  great  a  change  from  a  free,  debonair,  and  courtly 
sort  of  behaviour,  which  we  had  formerly  found  there,  into 
so  strict  a  gravity  as  they  now  received  us  with,  did  not 
a  little  amuse  us,  and  disappointed  our  expectations  of  such 
a  pleasant  visit  as  we  had  promised  ourselves. 

"  For  my  part,  I  sought,  and  at  length  found,  means  to 
cast  myself  into  the  company  of  the  daughter,  whom  I 
found  gathering  flowers  in  the  garden,  attended  by  her 
maid,  also  a  Quaker.  But  when  I  addressed  her  after  my 
accustomed  manner,  with  intention  to  engage  her  in  dis- 
course, on  the  foot  of  our  former  acquaintance,  though  she 
treated  me  with  a  courteous  mien,  yet,  young  as  she  was, 
the  gravity  of  her  looks  and  behaviour  struck  such  an  awe 
upon  me  that  I  found  myself  not  so  much  master  of  myself 
as  to  pursue  any  further  converse  with  her. 

"  We  stayed  dinner,  which  was  very  handsome,  and 
lacked  nothing  to  recommend  it  to  me  but  the  want  of 
mirth  and  pleasant  discourse,  which  we  could  neither  have 
with  them,  nor,  by  reason  of  them,  with  one  another;  the 
weightiness  which  was  upon  their  spirits  and  countenances 
keeping  down  the  lightness  that  would  have  been  up  in 
ours." 

Not  long  after  they  made  a  second  visit  to  their  sober 
friends,  spending  several  days,  during  which  they  attended 
a  meeting  in  a  neighbouring  farmhouse,  where  we  are  in- 
troduced by  Ellwood  to  two  remarkable  personages,  Ed- 
ward Rurrough,  the  friend  and  fearless  reprover  of  Crom- 
well, and  by  far  the  most  eloquent  preacher  of  his  sect; 
and '  James  Nayler,  whose  melancholy  after-history  of 
fanaticism,  cruel  sufferings,  and  beautiful  repentance,  is  so 


308 


WHITTIER 


well  known  to  the  readers  of  English  history  under  the 
Protectorate.  Under  the  preaching  of  these  men,  and  the 
influence  of  the  Pennington  family,  young  Ellwood  was 
brought  into  fellowship  with  the  Quakers.  Of  the  old 
justice's  sorrow  and  indignation  at  this  sudden  blasting  of 
his  hopes  and  wishes  in  respect  to  his  son,  and  of  the  trials 
and  difficulties  of  the  latter  in  his  new  vocation,  it  is  now 
scarcely  worth  while  to  speak.  Let  us  step  forward  a  few 
years,  to  1662,  considering  meantime  how  matters,  political 
and  spiritual,  are  changed  in  that  brief  period.  Cromwell, 
the  Maccabeus  of  Puritanism,  is  no  longer  among  men; 
Charles  II  sits  in  his  place;  profane  and  licentious 
cavaliers  have  thrust  aside  the  sleek-haired,  painful-faced 
Independents,  who  used  to  groan  approval  to  the  scrip- 
tural illustrations  of  Harrison  and  Fleetwood;  men  easy 
of  virtue,  without  sincerity,  either  in  religion  or  politics, 
occupying  the  places  made  honourable  by  the  Miltons, 
Whitlocks,  and  Vanes  of  the  commonwealth.  Having 
this  change  in  view,  the  light  which  the  farthing  candle  of 
Ellwood  sheds  upon  one  of  these  illustrious  names  will 
not  be  unwelcome.  In  his  intercourse  with  Penn,  and 
other  learned  Quakers,  he  had  reason  to  lament  his 
own  deficiencies  in  scholarship,  and  his  friend  Penning- 
ton undertook  to  put  him  in  a  way  of  remedying  the 
defect. 

"  He  had,"  says  Ellwood,  "  an  intimate  acquaintance 
with  Dr.  Paget,  a  physician  of  note  in  London,  and  he  with 
John  Milton,  a  gentleman  of  great  note  for  learning 
throughout  the  learned  world,  for  the  accurate  pieces  he 
had  written  on  various  subjects  and  occasions. 

"  This  person,  having  filled  a  public  station  in  the 
former  times,  lived  a  private  and  retired  life  in  London, 
and,  having  lost  his  sight,  kept  always  a  man  to  read  for 
him,  which  usually  was  the  son  of  some  gentleman  of  his 
acquaintance,  whom,  in  kindness,  he  took  to  improve  in 
his  learning. 

"  Thus,  by  the  mediation  of  my  friend  Isaac  Penning- 
ton with  Dr.  Paget,  and  through  him  with  John  Milton, 
was  I  admitted  to  come  to  him;  not  as  a  servant  to  him, 
nor  to  be  in  the  house  with  him,  but  only  to  have  the 
liberty  of  coming  to  his  house  at  certain  hours  when  I 


THOMAS   ELLWOOD  309 

would,  and  read  to  him  what  books  he  should  appoint, 
which  was  all  the  favour  I  desired. 

"  He  received  me  courteously,  as  well  for  the  sake  of 
Dr.  Paget,  who  introduced  me,  as  of  Isaac  Pennington, 
who  recommended  me,  to  both  of  whom  he  bore  a  good 
respect.  And,  having  inquired  divers  things  of  me,  with 
respect  to  my  former  progression  in  learning,  hre  dismissed 
me,  to  provide  myself  with  such  accommodations  as  might 
be  most  suitable  to  my  studies. 

"  I  went,  therefore,  and  took  lodgings  as  near  to  his 
house  (which  was  then  in  Jewen  Street)  as  I  conveniently 
could,  and  from  thenceforward  went  every  day  in  the  after- 
noon, except  on  the  first  day  of  the  week,  and,  sitting  by 
him  in  his  dining-room,  read  to  him  such  books  in  the 
Latin  tongue  as  he  pleased  to  have  me  read. 

"  He  perceiving  with  what  earnest  desire  I  had  pursued 
learning,  gave  me  not  only  all  the  encouragement,  but  all 
the  help  he  could.  For,  having  a  curious  ear,  he  under- 
stood by  my  tone  when  I  understood  what  I  read  and  when 
I  did  not,  and  accordingly  would  stop  me,  examine  me, 
and  open  the  most  difficult  passages  to  me." 

Thanks,  worthy  Thomas,  for  this  glimpse  into  John 
Milton's  dining-room! 

He  had  been  with  "  Master  Milton,"  as  he  calls  him, 
only  a  few  weeks  when,  being  one  "  first  day  morning," 
at  the  Bull  and  Mouth  meeting,  Aldersgate,  the  train-bands 
of  the  city,  "  with  great  noise  and  clamour,"  headed  by 
Major  Rosewell,  fell  upon  him  and  his  friends.  The  im- 
mediate cause  of  this  onslaught  upon  quiet  worshippers  was 
the  famous  plot  of  the  Fifth  Monarchy  men,  grim  old 
fanatics,  who  (like  the  Millerites  of  the  present  day)  had 
been  waiting  long  for  the  personal  reign  of  Christ  and  the 
saints  upon  earth,  and  in  their  zeal  to  hasten  such  a  con- 
summation, had  sallied  into  London  streets  with  drawn 
swords  and  loaded  matchlocks.  The  government  took 
strong  measures  for  suppressing  dissenters'  meetings  or 
"  conventicles";  and  the  poor  Quakers,  although  not  at 
all  implicated  in  the  disturbance,  suffered  more  severely 
than  any  others.  Let  us  look  at  the  "  freedom  of  con- 
science and  worship  "  in  England  under  that  irreverent  De- 
fender of  the  Faith,  Charles  II.  Ellwood  says:  "  He  that 


3,0  WHITTIER 

commanded  the  party  gave  us  first  a  general  charge  to 
come  out  of  the  room.  But  we,  who  came  thither  at 
God's  requiring  to  worship  him  (like  that  good  man  of  old, 
who  said  we  ought  to  obey  God  rather  than  man),  stirred 
not,  but  kept  our  places.  Whereupon  he  sent  some  of  his 
soldiers  among  us,  with  command  to  drag  or  drive  us  out, 
which  they  did  roughly  enough."  Think  of  it:  grave  men 
and  women,  and  modest  maidens,  sitting  there  with  calm, 
impassive  countenances,  motionless  as  death,  the  pikes  of 
the  soldiery  closing  about  them  in  a  circle  of  bristling  steel! 
Brave  and  true  ones!  Not  in  vain  did  ye  thus  oppose  God's 
silence  to  the  devil's  uproar;  Christian  endurance  and  calm 
persistence  in  the  exercise  of  your  rights  as  Englishmen  and 
men  to  the  hot  fury  of  impatient  tyranny !  From  your  day 
down  to  this,  the  world  has  been  the  better  for  your  faith- 
fulness. 

Ellwood  and  some  thirty  of  his  friends  were  marched 
off  to  prison  in  Old  Bridewell,  which,  as  well  as  nearly  all 
the  other  prisons,  was  already  crowded  with  Quaker  pris- 
oners. One  of  the  rooms  of  the  prison  was  used  as  a  tor- 
ture chamber.  "  I  was  almost  affrighted,"  says  Ellwood, 
"  by  the  dismalness  of  the  place;  for,  besides  that  the  walls 
were  all  laid  over  with  black,  from  top  to  bottom,  there 
stood  in  the  middle  a  great  whipping-post. 

"  The  manner  of  whipping  there  is  to  strip  the  party 
to  the  skin,  from  the  waist  upward,  and,  having  fastened 
him  to  the  whipping-post  (so  that  he  can  neither  resist  nor 
shun  the  strokes),  to  lash  his  naked  body  with  long,  slen- 
der twigs  of  holly,  which  will  bend  almost  like  thongs 
around  the  body;  and  these,  having  little  knots  upon  them, 
tear  the  skin  and  flesh,  and  give  extreme  pain." 

To  this  terrible  punishment  aged  men  and  delicately 
nurtured  young  females  were  often  subjected,  during  this 
season  of  hot  persecution. 

From  the  Bridewell,  Ellwood  was  at  length  removed 
to  Newgate,  and  thrust  in,  with  other  "  Friends,"  amid 
the  common  felons.  He  speaks  of  this  prison,  with  its 
thieves,  murderers,  and  prostitutes,  its  overcrowded  apart- 
ments, and  loathsome  cells,  as  "  a  hell  upon  earth."  In  a 
closet,  adjoining  the  room  where  he  was  lodged,  lay  for 
several  days  the  quartered  bodies  of  Phillips,  Tongue,  and 


THOMAS  ELLWOOD  31I 

Gibbs,  the  leaders  of  the  Fifth  Monarchy  rising,  frightful 
and  loathsome,  as  they  came  from  the  bloody  hand  of  the 
executioners!  These  ghastly  remains  were  at  length  ob- 
tained by  the  friends  of  the  dead,  and  buried.  The  heads 
were  ordered  to  be  prepared  for  setting  up  in  different 
parts  of  the  city.  Read  this  grim  passage  of  description: 

"  I  saw  the  heads  when  they  were  brought  to  be  boiled. 
The  hangman  fetched  them  in  a  dirty  basket,  out  of  some 
by-place,  and  setting  them  down  among  the  felons,  he  and 
they  made  sport  of  them.  They  took  them  by  the  hair, 
flouting,  jeering,  and  laughing  at  them;  and  then  giving 
them  some  ill  names,  boxed  them  on  their  ears  and  cheeks; 
which  done,  the  hangman  put  them  into  his  kettle,  and  par- 
boiled them  with  bay  salt  and  cumin  seed;  that  to  keep 
them  from  putrefaction,  and  this  to  keep  off  the  fowls  from 
seizing  upon  them.  The  whole  sight,  as  well  that  of  the 
bloody  quarters  first,  as  this  of  the  heads  afterward,  was 
both  frightful  and  loathsome,  and  begat  an  abhorrence  in 
my  nature." 

At  the  next  session  of  the  municipal  court  at  the  Old 
Bailey,  Ellwood  obtained  his  discharge.  After  paying  a 
visit  to  "  my  Master  Milton,"  he  made  his  way  to  Chal- 
font,  the  home  of  his  friends  the  Penningtons,  where  he 
was  soon  after  engaged  as  a  Latin  teacher.  •  Here  he  seems 
to  have  had  his  trials  and  temptations.  Gulielma  Sprin- 
gette,  the  daughter  of  Pennington's  wife,  his  old  playmate, 
had  now  grown  to  be  "  a  fair  woman  of  marriageable  age," 
and,  as  he  informs  us,  "  very  desirable,  whether  regard  was 
had  to  her  outward  person,  which  wanted  nothing  to  make 
her  completely  comely,  or  to  the  endowments  of  her  mind, 
which  were  every  way  extraordinary,  or  to  her  outward 
fortune,  which  was  fair."  From  all  which  we  are  not  sur- 
prised to  learn  that  "  she  was  secretly  and  openly  sought 
for  by  many  of  almost  every  rank  and  condition."  "  To 
whom,"  continues  Thomas,  "  in  their  respective  turns  (till 
he  at  length  came  for  whom  she  was  reserved),  she  car- 
ried herself  with  so  much  evenness  of  temper,  such  cour- 
teous freedom,  guarded  by  the  strictest  modesty,  that  as 
it  gave  encouragement  or  ground  of  hope  to  none,  so 
neither  did  it  administer  any  matter  of  offence  or  just  cause 
of  complaint  to  any." 


WHITTIER 

Beautiful  and  noble  maiden!  How  the  imagination 
fills  up  this  outline  limning  by  her  friend,  and,  if  truth 
must  be  told,  admirer!  Serene,  courteous,  healthful;  a  ray 
of  tenderest  and  blandest  light,  shining  steadily  in  the  sober 
gloom  of  that  old  household!  Confirmed  Quaker  as  she 
is,  shrinking  from  none  of  the  responsibilities  and  dangers 
of  her  profession,  and  therefore  liable  at  any  time  to  the 
penalties  of  prison  and  whipping-post,  under  that  plain 
garb  and  in  spite  of  that  "  certain  gravity  of  look  and  be- 
haviour," which,  as  we  have  seen,  on  one  occasion  awed 
young  Ellwood  into  silence,  youth,  beauty,  and  refine- 
ment assert  their  prerogatives;  love  knows  no  creed; 
the  gay,  and  titled,  and  wealthy  crowd  around  her,  su- 
ing in  vain  for  her  favour. 

"  Followed,  like  the  tided  moon, 
She  moves  as  calmly  on," 

"  until  he  at  length  comes  for  whom  she  was  reserved," 
and  her  name  is  united  with  that  of  one  worthy  even  of 
her,  the  world-renowned  William  Penn. 

Meantime,  one  can  not  but  feel  a  good  degree  of  sym- 
pathy with  young  Ellwood,  her  old  schoolmate  and  play- 
mate, placed,  as  he  was,  in  the  same  family  with  her,  en- 
joying her  familiar  conversation  and  unreserved  confidence; 
and,  as  he  says,  the  "  advantageous  opportunities  of  riding 
and  walking  abroad  with  her,  by  night  as  well  as  by  day, 
without  any  other  company  than  her  maid;  for  so  great, 
indeed,  was  the  confidence  that  her  mother  had  in  me,  that 
she  thought  her  daughter  safe,  if  I  was  with  her,  even  from 
the  plots  and  designs  of  others  upon  her."  So  near,  and  yet, 
alas!  in  truth,  so  distant!  The  serene  and  gentle  light 
which  shone  upon  him,  in  the  sweet  solitudes  of  Chalfont, 
was  that  of  a  star,  itself  unapproachable.  As  he  himself 
meekly  intimates,  she  was  reserved  for  another.  He  seems 
to  have  fully  understood  his  own  position  in  respect  to  her; 
although,  to  use  his  own  words,  "  others  measuring  him 
by  the  propensity  of  their  own  inclinations,  concluded  he 
would  steal  her,  run  away  with  her  and  marry  her."  Little 
did  these  jealous  surmisers  know  of  the  true  and  really 
heroic  spirit  of  the  young  Latin  master.  His  own  apology 
and  defence  of  his  conduct,  under  circumstances  of  tempta- 


THOMAS   ELLWOOD  313 

tion  which  St.  Anthony  himself  could  have  scarcely  better 
resisted,  will  not  be  amiss: 

"  I  was  not  ignorant  of  the  various  fears  which  filled  the 
jealous  heads  of  some  concerning  me,  neither  was  I  so 
stupid  nor  so  divested  of  all  humanity  as  not  to  be  sensible 
of  the  real  and  innate  worth  and  virtue  which  adorned  that 
excellent  dame,  and  attracted  the  eyes  and  hearts  of  so 
many,  with  the  greatest  importunity,  to  seek  and  solicit 
her;  nor  was  I  so  devoid  of  natural  heat  as  not  to  feel 
some  sparklings  of  desire,  as  well  as  others;  but  the  force 
of  truth  and  sense  of  honour  suppressed  whatever  would 
have  risen  beyond  the  bounds  of  fair  and  virtuous  friend- 
ship. For  I  easily  foresaw  that,  if  I  should  have  attempted 
anything  in  a  dishonourable  way,  by  fraud  or  force,  upon 
her,  I  should  have  thereby  brought  a  wound  upon  mine 
own  soul,  a  foul  scandal  upon  my  religious  profession, 
and  an  infamous  stain  upon  mine  honour,  which  was  far 
more  dear  unto  me  than  my  life.  Wherefore,  having  ob- 
served how  some  others  had  befooled  themselves,  by 
misconstruing  her  common  kindness  (expressed  in  an 
innocent,  open,  free,  and  familiar  conversation,  spring- 
ing from  the  abundant  affability,  courtesy,  and  sweetness 
of  her  natural  temper)  to  be  the  effect  of  a  singular  re- 
gard and  peculiar  affection  to  them,  I  resolved  to  shun 
the  rock  whereon  they  split;  and,  remembering  the  say- 
ing of  the  poet, 

"  '  Felix  quern  faciunt  aliena  Pericula  cantum,' 

I  governed  myself  in  a  free  yet  respectful  carriage  toward 
her,  thereby  preserving  a  fair  reputation  with  my  friends, 
and  enjoying  as  much  of  her  favour  and  kindness,  in  a 
virtuous  and  firm  friendship,  as  was  fit  for  her  to  show 
or  for  me  to  seek." 

Well  and  worthily  said,  poor  Thomas!  Whatever 
might  be  said  of  others,  thou,  at  least,  wast  no  coxcomb.. 
Thy  distant  and  involuntary  admiration  of  "  the  fair  Guli  "' 
needs,  however,  no  excuse.  Poor  human  nature,  guard  it 
as  one  may,  with  strictest  discipline  and  painfully  cramp- 
ing environment,  will  sometimes  act  out  itself;  and,  in  thy 
case,  not  even  George  Fox  himself,  knowing  thy  beautiful! 
young  friend  (and  doubtless  admiring  her  too,  for  he.  was, 


WHITTIER 

one  of  the  first  to  appreciate  and  honour  the  worth  and 
dignity  of  woman),  could  have  found  it  in  his  heart  to 
censure  thee! 

At  this  period,  as  was  indeed  most  natural,  our  young 
teacher  solaced  himself  with  ocasional  appeals  to  what  he 
calls  the  "  Muses."  There  is  reason  to  believe,  however, 
that  the  pagan  sisterhood  whom  he  ventured  to  invoke  sel- 
dom graced  his  study  with  their  personal  attendance.  In 
these  rhyming  efforts,  scattered  up  and  down  his  "  Jour- 
nal," there  are  occasional  sparkles  of  genuine  wit,  and 
passages  of  keen  sarcasm,  tersely  and  fitly  expressed. 
Others  breathe  a  warm,  devotional  feeling;  in  the  following 
brief  prayer,  for  instance,  the  wants  of  the  humble  Chris- 
tian are  condensed  in  a  manner  worthy  of  Quarles  or 
Herbert: 

"  Oh!  that  mine  eye  might  closed  be 
To  what  concerns  me  not  to  see; 
That  deafness  might  possess  mine  ear 
To  what  concerns  me  not  to  hear; 
That  Truth  my  tongue  might  always  tie 
From  ever  speaking  foolishly; 
That  no  vain  thought  might  ever  rest 
Or  be  conceived  in  my  breast; 
That  by  each  word  and  deed  and  thought, 
Glory  may  to  my  God  be  brought! 
But  what  are  wishes?    Lord,  mine  eye 
On  thee  is  fixed,  to  thee  I  cry: 
Wash,  Lord,  and  purify  my  heart, 
And  make  it  clean  in  every  part; 
And  when  'tis  clean,  Lord,  keep  it  too, 
For  that  is  more  than  I  can  do." 

The  thought  in  the  following  extracts  from  a  poem, 
written  on  the  death  of  his  friend  Pennington's  son,  is 
trite,  but  not  inaptly  or  inelegantly  expressed: 

"  What  ground,  alas !  has  any  man 

To  set  his  heart  on  things  below, 
Which,  when  they  seem  most  like  to  stand, 

Fly  like  the  arrow  from  the  bow! 
Who's  now  atop  ere  long  shall  feel 
The  circling  motion  of  the  wheel! 

"  The  world  can  not  afford  a  thing 

Which  to  a  well-composed  mind 
Can  any  lasting  pleasure  bring, 

But  in  itself  its  grave  will  find. 
All  things  unto  their  centre  tend — 
What  had  beginning  must  have  end! 


THOMAS   ELLWOOD 

"  No  disappointment  can  befall 
Us,  having  him  who's  all  in  all! 
What  can  of  pleasure  him  prevent 
Who  hath  the  Fountain  of  Content?  " 

In  the  year  1663  a  severe  law  was  enacted  against  the 
"  sect  called  Quakers,"  prohibiting  their  meetings,  with 
the  penalty  of  banishment  for  the  third  offence!  The  bur- 
den of  the  prosecution  which  followed  fell  upon  the  Quak- 
ers of  the  metropolis,  large  numbers  of  whom  were  heavily 
fined,  imprisoned,  and  sentenced  to  be  banished  from  their 
native  land.  Yet  in  time  our  worthy  friend  Ellwood 
came  in  for  his  own  share  of  trouble,  in  consequence  of 
attending  the  funeral  of  one  of  his  friends.  An  evil-dis- 
posed justice  of  the  county  obtained  information  of  the 
Quaker  gathering;  and,  while  the  body  of  the  dead  was 
"  borne  on  Friends'  shoulders  through  the  street,  in  order 
to  be  carried  to  the  burying  ground,  which  was  at  the 
town's  end,"  says  Ellwood,  "  he  rushed  out  upon  us  with 
the  constables  and  a  rabble  of  rude  fellows  whom  he  had 
gathered  together,  and,  having  his  drawn  sword  in  his 
hand,  struck  one  of  the  foremost  of  the  bearers  with  it, 
commanding  them  to  set  down  the  coffin.  But  the 
Friend  who  was  so  stricken,  being  more  concerned  for 
the  safety  of  the  dead  body  than  .for  his  own,  lest  it 
should  fall,  and  any  indecency  thereupon  follow,  held  the 
coffin  fast;  which  the  justice  observing,  and  being  en- 
raged that  his  word  was  not  forthwith  obeyed,  set  his 
hand  to  the  coffin  and  with  a  forcible  thrust  threw  it  off 
from  the  bearers'  shoulders,  so  that  it  fell  to  the  ground 
in  the  middle  of  the  street,  and  there  we  were  forced 
to  leave  it,  for  the  constables  and  rabble  fell  upon  us  and 
drew  some  and  drove  others  into  the  inn.  Of  those  thus 
taken,"  continues  Ellwood,  "  I  was  one.  They  picked  out 
ten  of  us  and  sent  us  to  Aylesbury  jail. 

"  They  caused  the  body  to  lie  in  the  open  street  and 
cartway,  so  that  all  travellers  that  passed,  whether  horse- 
men, coaches,  carts,  or  wagons,  were  fain  to  break  out 
of  the  way  to  go  by  it,  until  it  was  almost  night.  And 
then,  having  caused  a  grave  to  be  made  in  the  unconse- 
crated  part  of  what  is  called  the  churchyard,  they  forcibly 
took  the  body  from  the  widow  and  buried  it  there." 


WHITTIER 

He  remained  a  prisoner  only  about  two  months,  dur- 
ing which  period  he  comforted  himself  by  such  verse- 
making  as  follows,  reminding  us  of  similar  enigmas  in 
Bunyan's  "Pilgrim's  Progress": 

"  Lo!  a  Riddle  for  the  wise, 
In  the  which  a  Mystery  lies. 

"  RIDDLE 

"  Some  men  are  free  while  they  in  prison  lie; 
Others  who  ne'er  saw  prison,  captives  die. 

"  CAUTION 

"  He  that  can  receive  it  may, 
He  that  can  not,  let  him  stay, 
Not  be  hasty,  but  suspend 
Judgment  till  he  sees  the  end. 

"  SOLUTION 

"  He's  only  free,  indeed,  who's  free  from  sin, 
And  he  is  fastest  bound  that's  bound  therein." 

In  the  meantime  where  is  our  "  Master  Milton  "?  We 
left  him  deprived  of  his  young  companion  and  reader,  sit- 
ting lonely  in  his  small  dining-room  in  Jewen  Street.  It 
is  now  the  year  1665;  is  not  the  pestilence  in  London? 
A  sinful  and  godless  city,  with  its  bloated  bishops,  fawn- 
ing around  the  Nell  Gwynns  of  a  licentious  and  profane 
Defender  of  the  Faith;  its  swaggering  and  drunken  cava- 
liers; its  ribald  jesters;  its  obscene  ballad-singers;  its 
loathsome  prisons,  crowded  with  God-fearing  men  and 
women.  Is  not  the  measure  of  its  iniquity  already  filled 
up?  Three  years  only  have  passed  since  the  terrible 
prayer  of  Vane  went  upward  from  the  scaffold  on  Tower 
Hill,  "  When  my  blood  is  shed  upon  the  block,  let  it,  O 
God!  have  a  voice  afterward!"  Audible  to  thy  ear,  oh, 
bosom  friend  of  the  martyr!  has  that  blood  cried  from 
earth;  and  now  how  fearfully  is  it  answered!  Like  the 
ashes  which  the  seer  of  the  Hebrews  cast  toward  heaven, 
it  has  returned  in  boils  and  blains  upon  the  proud  and  op- 
pressive city.  John  Milton,  sitting  blind  in  Jewen  Street, 
has  heard  the  toll  of  the  death  bells,  and  the  night-long 
rumble  of  the  burial  carts,  and  the  terrible  summons, 
"Bring  out  your  dead!"  The  Angel  of  the  Plague,  in 
yellow  mantle,  purple-spotted,  walks  the  streets.  Why 


THOMAS   ELLWOOD 

should  he  tarry  in  a  doomed  city,  forsaken  of  God?  Is 
not  the  command,  even  to  him,  "Arise!  and  flee  for  thy 
life  "?  In  some  green  nook  of  the  quiet  country  he  may 
finish  the  great  work  which  his  hands  have  found  to  do. 
He  bethinks  him  of  his  old  friends,  the  Penningtons,  and 
his  young  Quaker  companion,  the  patient  and  gentle 
Ellwood.  "  Wherefore,"  says  the  latter,  "  some  little  time 
before  I  went  to  Aylesbury  jail  I  was  desired  by  my 
quondam  Master  Milton  to  take  a  house  for  him  in  the 
neighbourhood  where  I  dwelt,  that  he  might  go  out  of 
the  city  for  the  safety  of  himself  and  his  family,  the  pesti- 
lence then  growing  hot  in  London.  I  took  a  pretty  box 
for  him  in  Giles  Chalfont,  a  mile  from  me,  of  which  I  gave 
him  notice,  and  intended  to  have  waited  on  him  and  seen 
him  well  settled,  but  was  prevented  by  that  imprisonment. 
But  now  being  released  and  returned  home,  I  soon  made 
a  visit  to  him  to  welcome  him  into  the  country.  After 
some  common  discourse  had  passed  between  us,  he  called 
for  a  manuscript  of  his,  which,  having  brought,  he  deliv- 
ered to  me,  bidding  me  take  it  home  with  me  and  read  it 
at  my  leisure,  and  when  I  had  so  done  return  it  to  him 
with  my  judgment  thereupon." 

Now  what  does  the  reader  think  young  Ellwood  car- 
ried in  his  gray  coat  pocket  across  the  dikes  and  hedges 
and  through  the  green  lanes  of  Giles  Chalfont  that  autumn 
day?  Let  us  look  further:  "  When  I  came  home,  and  had 
set  myself  to  read  it,  I  found  it  was  that  excellent  poem 
which  he  entitled  '  Paradise  Lost.'  After  I  had,  with  the 
best  attention,  read  it  through,  I  made  him  another  visit; 
and,  returning  his  book  with  due  acknowledgment  of  the 
favour  he  had  done  me  in  communicating  it  to  me,  he 
asked  me  how  I  liked  it,  and  what  I  thought  of  it,  which 
I  modestly  but  freely  told  him;  and,  after  some  further 
discourse  about  it,  I  pleasantly  said  to  him:  '  Thou  hast 
said  much  here  of  Paradise  Lost;  what  hast  thou  to  say 
of  Paradise  Found?  '  He  made  me  no  answer,  but  sat  some 
time  in  a  muse,  then  brake  off  that  discourse,  and  fell 
upon  another  subject." 

"  I  modestly  but  freely  told  him  what  I  thought  "  of 
"  Paradise  Lost  "!  -What  he  told  him  remains  a  mystery. 
One  would  like  to  know  more  precisely  what  the  first 


WHITTIER 

critical  reader  of  that  song  "  of  man's  first  disobedience  " 
thought  of  it.  Fancy  the  young  Quaker  and  blind  Milton 
sitting  some  pleasant  afternoon  of  the  autumn  of  that 
old  year,  in  "  the  pretty  box  "  at  Chalfont,  the  soft  wind 
through  the  open  window  lifting  the  thin  hair  of  the 
glorious  old  poet!  Backslidden  England,  plague-smitten, 
and  accursed  with  her  faithless  Church  and  libertine  king, 
knows  little  of  poor  "  Master  Milton,"  and  takes  small 
note  of  his  Puritanic  verse-making.  Alone,  with  his  hum- 
ble friend,  he  sits  there,  conning  over  that  poem  which, 
he  fondly  hoped,  the  world,  which  had  grown  all  dark 
and  strange  to  the  author,  "  would  not  willingly  let  die." 
The  suggestion  in  respect  to  "  Paradise  Found,"  to  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  "  he  made  no  answer,  but  sat  some  time 
in  a  muse,"  seems  not  to  have  been  lost;  for,  "after  the 
sickness  was  over,"  continues  Ellwood,  "  and  the  city  well 
cleansed,  and  become  safely  habitable  again,  he  returned 
thither;  and  when  afterward  I  waited  on  him  there,  which 
I  seldom  failed  of  doing  whenever  my  occasions  drew  me 
to  London,  he  showed  me  his  second  poem,  called  '  Para- 
dise Gained';  and  in  a  pleasant  tone  said  to  me,  '  This 
is  owing  to  you,  for  you  put  it  into  my  head  by  the  ques- 
tion you  put  to  me  at  Chalfont,  which  before  I  had  not 
thought  of.' ' 

Golden  days  were  these  for  the  young  Latin  reader, 
even  if  it  be  true,  as  we  suspect,  that  he  was  himself  very 
far  from  appreciating  the  glorious  privilege  which  he  en- 
joyed of  the  familiar  friendship  and  confidence  of  Milton. 
But  they  could  not  last.  His  amiable  host,  Isaac  Pen- 
nington,  a  blameless  and  quiet  country  gentleman,  was 
dragged  from  his  house  by  a  military  force  and  lodged 
in  Aylesbury  jail;  his  wife  and  family  forcibly  ejected  from 
their  pleasant  home,  which  was  seized  upon  by  the  gov- 
ernment as  security  for  the  fines  imposed  upon  its  owner. 
The  plague  was  in  the  village  of  Aylesbury,  and  in  the 
very  prison  itself;  but  the  noble-hearted  Mary  Penning- 
ton  followed  her  husband,  sharing  with  him  the  dark  peril. 
Poor  Ellwood,  while  attending  a  monthly  meeting  at 
Hedgerly,  with  six  others  (among  them  one  Morgan  Wat- 
kins,  a  poor  old  Welshman,  who,  painfully  endeavouring 
to  utter  his  testimony  in  his  own  dialect,  was  suspected 


THOMAS  ELLWOOD 

by  the  Dogberry  of  a  justice  of  being  a  Jesuit  trolling 
over  his  Latin),  was  arrested  and  committed  to  Wiccomb 
House  of  Correction. 

This  was  a  time  of  severe  trial  for  the  sect  with  which 
Ellwood  had  connected  himself.  In  the  very  midst  of  the 
pestilence,  when  thousands  perished  weekly  in  London, 
fifty-four  Quakers  were  marched  through  the  almost  de- 
serted streets  and  placed  on  board  a  ship,  for  the  purpose 
of  being  conveyed,  according  to  their  sentence  of  banish- 
ment, to  the  West  Indies.  The  ship  lay  for  a  long  time, 
with  many  others  similarly  situated,  a  helpless  prey  to  the 
pestilence.  Through  that  terrible  autumn  the  prisoners 
sat  waiting  for  the  summons  of  the  ghastly  destroyer; 
and  from  their  floating  dungeon — 

"  Heard  the  groan 

Of  agonizing  ships  from  shore  to  shore; 
Heard  nightly  plunged  beneath  the  sullen  wave 
The  frequent  corse." 

When  the  vessel  at  length  set  sail,  of  the  fifty-four  who 
went  on  board,  twenty-seven  only  were  living.  A  Dutch 
privateer  captured  her  when  two  days  out  and  carried' the 
prisoners  to  North  Holland,  where  they  were  set  at  lib- 
erty. The  condition  of  the  jails  in  the  city,  where  were 
large  numbers  of  Quakers,  was  dreadful  in  the  extreme. 
Ill  ventilated,  crowded,  and  loathsome  with  the  accumu- 
lated filth  of  centuries,  they  invited  the  disease  which  daily 
decimated  their  cells.  "  Go  on!"  says  Pennington,  writ- 
ing to  the  king  and  bishops  from  his  plague-infected  cell 
in  the  Aylesbury  prison,  "  try  it  out  with  the  spirit  of 
the  Lord,  come  forth  with  your  laws,  and  prisons,  and 
spoiling  of  goods,  and  banishment  and  death,  if  the  Lord 
please,  and  see  if  ye  can  carry  it!  Whom  the  Lord  loveth 
he  can  save  at  his  pleasure.  Hath  he  begun  to  break  our 
bonds  and  deliver  us,  and  shall  we  now  distrust  him?  Are 
we  in  a  worse  condition  than  Israel  was  when  the  sea  was 
before  them,  the  mountains  on  either  side,  and  the  Egyp- 
tians behind  pursuing  them?  " 

Brave  men  and  faithful!  It  is  not  necessary  that  the 
present  generation,  now  quietly  reaping  the  fruit  of  your 
heroic  endurance,  should  see  eye  to  eye  with  you  in  re- 
spect to  all  your  testimonies  and  beliefs,  in  order  to  recog- 


320  WHITTIER 

nise  your  claim  to  gratitude  and  admiration.  For,  in  an 
age  of  hypocritical  hollowness  and  mean  self-seeking, 
when,  with  noble  exceptions,  the  very  Puritans  of  Crom- 
well's reign  of  the  saints  were  taking  profane  lessons  from 
their  old  enemies,  and  putting  on  an  outside  show  of  con- 
formity for  the  sake  of  place  or  pardon,  ye  maintained  the 
austere  dignity  of  virtue,  and,  with  king  and  Church  and 
Parliament  arrayed  against  you,  vindicated  the  rights  of 
conscience  at  the  cost  of  home,  fortune,  and  life.  Eng- 
lish liberty  owes  more  to  your  unyielding  firmness  than 
to  the  blows  stricken  for  her  at  Worcester  and  Naseby. 

In  1667  we  find  the  Latin  teacher  in  attendance  at 
a  great  meeting  of  Friends  in  London,  convened  at  the 
suggestion  of  George  Fox,  for  the  purpose  of  settling  a 
little  difficulty  which  had  arisen  among  the  Friends,  even 
under  the  pressure  of  the  severest  persecution,  relative 
to  the  very  important  matter  of  "  wearing  the  hat." 
George  Fox,  in  his  love  of  truth  and  sincerity,  in  word 
and  action,  had  discountenanced  the  fashionable  doffing  of 
the  hat  and  other  flattering  obeisances  toward  men  hold- 
ing stations  in  Church  or  state  as  savouring  of  man- 
worship,  giving  to  the  creature  the  reverence  only  due  to 
the  Creator,  as  undignified  and  wanting  in  due  self-respect, 
and  tending  to  support  unnatural  and  oppressive  distinc- 
tions among  those  equal  in  the  sight  of  God.  But  some 
of  his  disciples  evidently  made  much  more  of  this  "  hat 
testimony  "  than  their  teacher.  One  John  Perrott,  who 
had  just  returned  from  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  con- 
vert the  Pope  at  Rome  (where  that  dignitary,  after  listen- 
ing to  his  exhortations,  and  finding  him  in  no  condition 
to  be  benefited  by  the  spiritual  physicians  of  the  Inquisi- 
tion, had  quietly  turned  him  over  to  the  temporal  ones 
of  the  Insane  Hospital),  had  broached  the  doctrine  that, 
in  public  or  private  worship,  the  hat  was  not  to  be  taken 
off  without  an  immediate  revelation  or  call  to  do  so!  Ell- 
wood  himself  seems  to  have  been  on  the  point  of  yielding 
to  this  notion,  which  appears  to  have  been  the  occasion 
of  a  good  deal  of  dissension  and  scandal.  Under  these 
circumstances,  to  save  truth  from  reproach,  and  an  im- 
portant testimony  to  the  essential  equality  of  mankind 
from  running  into  sheer  fanaticism,  Fox  summoned  his 


THOMAS  ELLWOOD  321 

tried  and  faithful  friends  together  from  all  parts  of  the 
United  Kingdom,  and,  as  it  appears,  with  the  happiest 
result.  Hat  revelations  were  discountenanced,  good  order 
and  harmony  re-established,  and  John  Perrott's  beaver, 
and  the  crazy  head  under  it,  were  from  thenceforth  power- 
less for  evil.  Let  those  who  are  disposed  to  laugh  at  this 
notable  Ecumenical  Council  of  the  Hat,  consider  that 
ecclesiastical  history  has  brought  down  to  us  the  records 
of  many  larger  and  more  imposing  convocations,  wherein 
grave  bishops  and  learned  fathers  took  each  other  by  the 
beard  upon  matters  of  far  less  practical  importance. 

In  1669  we  find  Ellwood  engaged  in  escorting  his 
fair  friend  Gulielma  to  her  uncle's  residence  in  Sussex. 
Passing  through  London,  and,  taking  the  Tunbridge 
Road,  they  stopped  at  Seven  Oaks  to  dine.  The  Duke  of 
York  was  on  the  road,  with  his  guards  and  hangers-on, 
and  the  inn  was  filled  with  a  rude  company.  "  Hasten- 
ing," says  Ellwood,  "  from  a  place  where  we  found  noth- 
ing but  rudeness,  the  roysterers  who  swarmed  there,  be- 
sides the  damning  oaths  they  belched  out  against  each 
other,  looked  very  sourly  upon  us,  as  if  they  grudged  us 
the  horses  which  we  rode  and  the  clothes  we  wore." 
They  had  proceeded  but  a  little  distance,  when  they  were 
overtaken  by  some  half  dozen  drunken  rough-riding  cava- 
liers, of  the  Wildrake  stamp,  in  full  pursuit  after  the  beau- 
tiful Quakeress.  One  of  them  impudently  attempted  to 
pull  her  upon  his  horse  before  him,  but  was  held  at  bay 
by  Ellwood,  who  seems,  on  this  occasion,  to  have  relied 
somewhat  upon  his  "  stick,"  in  defending  his  fair  charge. 
Calling  up  Gulielma's  servant,  he  bade  him  ride  on  one 
side  of  his  mistress,  while  he  guarded  her  on  the  other. 
"  But  he,"  says  Ellwood,  "  not  thinking  it  perhaps  decent 
to  ride  so  near  his  mistress,  left  room  enough  for  another 
to  ride  between."  In  dashed  the  drunken  retainer,  and 
Gulielma  was  once  more  in  peril.  It  was  clearly  no  time 
for  exhortations  and  expostulations,  "  so,"  says  Ellwood, 
"  I  chopped  in  upon  him,  by  a  nimble  turn,  and  kept  him 
at  bay.  I  told  him  I  had  hitherto  spared  him,  but  wished 
him  not  to  provoke  me  further.  This  I  spoke  in  such  a 
tone  as  bespoke  an  high  resentment  of  the  abuse  put  upon 
us,  and  withal  pressed  him  so  hard  with  my  horse  that  I 


322 


WHITTIER 


suffered  him  not  to  come  up  again  to  Guli."  By  this  time 
it  became  evident  to  the  companions  of  the  ruffianly  as- 
sailant that  the  young  Quaker  was  in  earnest,  and  they 
hastened  to  interfere.  "  For  they,"  says  Ellwood,  "  see- 
ing the  contest  rise  so  high,  and  probably  fearing  it  would 
rise  higher,  not  knowing  where  it  might  stop,  came  in  to 
part  us,  which  they  did  by  taking  him  away." 

Escaping  from  these  sons  of  Belial,  Ellwood  and  his 
fair  companion  rode  on  through  Tunbridge  Wells,  "  the 
street  thronged  with  men,  who  looked  very  earnestly  at 
them,  but  offered  them  no  affront,"  and  arrived,  late  at 
night,  in  a  driving  rain,  at  the  mansion  house  of  Herbert 
Springette.  The  fiery  old  gentleman  was  so  indignant 
at  the  insult  offered  to  his  niece  that  he  was  with  diffi- 
culty dissuaded  from  demanding  satisfaction  at  the  hands 
of  the  Duke  of  York. 

This  seems  to  have  been  his  last  ride  with  Gulielma. 
She  was  soon  after  married  to  William  Penn,  and  took 
up  her  abode  at  Worminghurst,  in  Sussex.  How  blessed 
and  beautiful  was  that  union  may  be  understood  from 
the  following  paragraph  of  a  letter,  written  by  her  hus- 
band on  the  eve  of  his  departure  for  America  to  lay  the 
foundations  of  a  Christian  colony: 

"  My  dear  wife!  remember  thou  wast  the  love  of  my 
youth,  and  much  the  joy  of  my  life,  the  most  beloved, 
as  well  as  the  most  worthy  of  all  my  earthly  comforts; 
and  the  reason  of  that  love  was  more  thy  inward  than  thy 
outward  excellences,  which  yet  were  many.  God  knows, 
and  thou  knowest  it,  I  can  say  it  was  a  match  of  Provi- 
dence's making;  and  God's  image  in  us  both  was  the 
first  thing  and  the  most  amiable  and  engaging  ornament 
in  our  eyes." 

About  this  time  our  friend  Thomas,  seeing  that  his  old 
playmate  at  Chalfont  was  destined  for  another,  turned 
his  attention  toward  a  "  young  Friend  named  Mary 
Ellis."  He  had  been  for  several  years  acquainted  with 
her,  but  now  he  "  found  his  heart  secretly  drawn  and  in- 
clining toward  her."  "  At  length,"  he  tells  us,  "  as  I  was 
sitting  all  alone,  waiting  upon  the  Lord  for  counsel  and 
guidance  in  this,  in  itself  and  to  me,  important  affair,  I 
felt  a  word  sweetly  arise  in  me,  as  if  I  had  heard  a  voice 


THOMAS   ELLWOOD 


323 


which  said,  '  Go,  and  prevail! '  and  faith  springing  in  my 
heart  at  the  word,  I  immediately  rose  and  went,  nothing 
doubting."  On  arriving  at  her  residence,  he  states  that 
he  "  solemnly  opened  his  mind  to  her,  which  was  a  great 
surprisal  to  her,  for  she  had  taken  in  an  apprehension, 
as  others  had  also  done,"  that  his  eye  had  been  fixed  else- 
where and  nearer  home.  "  I  used  not  many  words  to 
her,"  he  continues,  "  but  I  felt  a  divine  power  went  along 
with  the  words,  and  fixed  the  matter  expressed  by  them 
so  fast  in  her  breast  that,  as  she  afterward  acknowledged 
to  me,  she  could  not  shut  it  out. 

"  I  continued,"  he  says,  "  my  visits  to  my  best-beloved 
Friend  until  we  married,  which  was  on  the  twenty-eighth 
day  of  the  eighth  month,  1669.  We  took  each  other  in 
a  select  meeting  of  the  ancient  and  grave  Friends  of  that 
country.  A  very  solemn  meeting  it  was,  and  in  a  weighty 
frame  of  spirit  we  were."  His  wife  seems  to  have  had 
some  estate;  and  Ellwood,  with  that  nice  sense  of  justice 
which  marked  all  his  actions,  immediately  made  his  will, 
securing  to  her,  in  case  of  his  decease,  all  her  own  goods 
and  moneys,  as  well  as  all  that  he  had  himself  acquired 
before  marriage.  "  Which,"  he  tells,  "  was  indeed  but 
little,  yet,  by  all  that  little,  more  than  I  had  ever  given 
her  ground  to  expect  with  me."  His  father,  who  was  yet 
unreconciled  to  the  son's  religious  views,  found  fault  with 
his  marriage,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  unlawful  and  un- 
sanctioned  by  priest  or  liturgy,  and  consequently  refused 
to  render  him  any  pecuniary  assistance.  Yet,  in  spite  of 
this  and  other  trials,  he  seems  to  have  preserved  his  seren- 
ity of  spirit.  After  an  unpleasant  interview  with  his  father, 
on  one  occasion  he  wrote  at  his  lodgings  in  an  inn  in  Lon- 
don what  he  calls  "  A  Song  of  Praise."  An  extract  from  it 
will  serve  to  show  the  spirit  of  the  good  man  in  affliction: 

"  Unto  the  glory  of  thy  holy  name, 

Eternal  God!  whom  I  both  love  and  fear, 

I  hereby  do  declare,  I  never  came 

Before  thy  throne,  and  found  thee  loath  to  hear, 
But  always  ready  with  an  open  ear, 

And,  though  sometimes  thou  seem'st  thy  face  to  hide, 
As  one  that  had  withdrawn  his  love  from  me, 

Tis  that  my  faith  may  to  the  full  be  tried, 
And  that  I  thereby  may  the  better  see 
How  weak  I  am  when  not  upheld  by  thee!  " 


WHITTIER 

The  next  year,  1670,  an  act  of  Parliament,  in  relation 
to  "  Conventicles,"  provided  that  any  person  who  should 
be  present  at  any  meeting,  under  colour  or  pretence  of 
any  exercise  of  religion,  in  other  manner  than  according 
to  the  liturgy  and  practice  of  the  Church  of  England, 
"should  be  liable  to  fines  of  from  five  to  ten  shillings; 
and  any  person  preaching  at  or  giving  his  house  for  the 
meeting,  to  a  fine  of  twenty  pounds,  one  third  of  the  fines 
being  received  by  the  informer  or  informers."  As  a  natu- 
ral consequence  of  such  a  law,  the  vilest  scoundrels  in  the 
land  set  up  the  trade  of  informers  and  heresy  hunters. 
Wherever  a  dissenting  meeting  or  burial  took  place,  there 
was  sure  to  be  a  mercenary  spy,  ready  to  bring  a  com- 
plaint against  all  in  attendance.  The  Independents  and 
Baptists  ceased,  in  a  great  measure,  to  hold  public  meet- 
ings, yet  even  they  did  not  escape  prosecution.  Bunyan, 
for  instance,  in  these  days  was  dreaming,  like  another 
Jacob,  of  angels  ascending  and  descending,  in  Bedford 
prison.  But  upon  the  poor  Quakers  fell  as  usual  the  great 
force  of  the  unjust  enactment.  Some  of  these  spies  or 
informers,  men  of  sharp  wit,  close  countenances,  pliant 
tempers,  and  skill  in  dissimulation,  took  the  guise  of 
Quakers,  Independents,  or  Baptists,  as  occasion  required, 
thrusting  themselves  into  the  meetings  of  the  proscribed 
sects,  ascertaining  the  number  who  attended,  their  rank 
and  condition,  and  then  informing  against  them.  Ell- 
wood,  in  his  journal  for  1670,  describes  several  of  these 
emissaries  of  evil.  One  of  them  came  to  a  Friend's  house 
in  Bucks,  professing  to  be  a  brother  in  the  faith,  but, 
overdoing  his  counterfeit  Quakerism,  was  detected  and 
dismissed  by  his  host.  Betaking  himself  to  the  inn,  he 
appeared  in  his  true  character,  drank  and  swore  roundly, 
and  confessed  over  his  cups  that  he  had  been  sent  forth 
on  his  mission  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Mew,  Vice-Chancellor  of 
Oxford.  Finding  little  success  in  counterfeiting  Quaker- 
ism, he  turned  to  the  Baptists,  where  for  a  time  he  met 
with  better  success.  Ellwood  at  this  time  rendered  good 
service  to  his  friends  by  exposing  the  true  character  of 
these  wretches,  and  bringing  them  to  justice  for  theft, 
perjury,  and  other  misdemeanors. 

While  this  storm  of  persecution  lasted  (a  period  of 


THOMAS  ELLWOOD  325 

two  or  three  years),  the  different  dissenting  sects  felt,  in 
some  measure,  a  common  sympathy,  and,  while  guarding 
themselves  against  their  common  foe,  had  little  leisure  for 
controversy  with  each  other;  but,  as  was  natural,  the 
abatement  of  their  mutual  suffering  and  danger  was  the 
signal  for  renewing  their  suspended  quarrels.  The  Bap- 
tists fell  upon  the  Quakers  with  pamphlet  and  sermon; 
the  latter  replied  in  the  same  way.  One  of  the  most  con- 
spicuous of  the  Baptist  disputants  was  the  famous  Jeremy 
Ives,  with  whom  our  friend  Ellwood  seems  to  have  had 
a  good  deal  of  trouble.  "  His  name,"  says  Ellwood,  "  was 
up  for  a  topping  disputant.  He  was  well  read  in  the  fal- 
lacies of  logic,  and  was  ready  in  framing  syllogisms.  His 
chief  art  lay  in  tickling  the  humour  of  rude,  unlearned, 
and  injudicious  hearers." 

The  following  piece  of  Ellwood's,  entitled  "  An  Epi- 
taph for  Jeremy  Ives,"  will  serve  to  show  that  wit  and 
drollery  were  sometimes  found  even  among  the  prover- 
bially sober  Quakers  of  the  seventeenth  century: 

"  Beneath  this  stone,  depressed  doth  lie 
The  Mirror  of  Hypocrisy — 
Ives,  whose  mercenary  tongue 
Like  a  Weathercock  was  hung, 
And  did  this  or  that  way  play, 
As  Advantage  led  the  way. 
If  well  hired,  he  would  dispute, 
Otherwise  he  would  be  mute. 
But  he'd  bawl  for  half  a  day 
If  he  knew  and  liked  his  pay. 

"  For  his  person,  let  it  pass; 
Only  note  his  face  was  brass. 
His  heart  was  like  a  pumice-stone, 
And  for  Conscience  he  had  none. 
Of  Earth  and  Air  he  was  composed, 
With  Water  round  about  inclosed. 
Earth  in  him  had  greatest  share, 
Questionless,  his  life  lay  there; 
Thence  his  cankered  Envy  sprung, 
Poisoning  both  his  heart  and  tongue. 

"  Air  made  him  frothy,  light,  and  vain, 
And  puffed  him  with  a  proud  disdain. 
Into  the  Water  oft  he  went, 
And  through  the  Water  many  sent. 
That  was,  ye  know  his  element! 
The  greatest  odds  that  did  appear 
Was  this,  for  aught  that  I  can  hear, 

31 


WHITTIER 

That  he  in  cold  did  others  dip, 
But  did  himself  hot  water  sip. 

"  And  his  cause  he'd  never  doubt, 
If  well  soaked  o'er  night  in  Stout; 
But,  meanwhile,  he  must  not  lack, 
Brandy,  and  a  draught  of  Sack. 
One  dispute  would  shrink  a  bottle 
Of  three  pints,  if  not  a  pottle. 
One  would  think  he  fetched  from  thence 
All  his  dreamy  eloquence. 

"  Let  us  now  bring  back  the  Sot 
To  his  Aqua  Vita  pot, 
And  observe,  with  some  content, 
How  he  framed  his  argument. 
That  his  whistle  he  might  wet, 
The  bottle  to  his  mouth  he  set, 
And,  being  master  of  that  art, 
Thence  he  drew  the  Major  part, 
But  left  the  Minor  still  behind; 
Good  reason  why,  he  wanted  wind; 
If  his  breath  would  have  held  out, 
He  had  Conclusion  drawn,  no  doubt." 

The  residue  of  Ellwood's  life  seems  to  have  glided  on 
in  serenity  and  peace.  He  wrote  at  intervals  many  pam- 
phlets in  defence  of  his  society,  and  in  favour  of  liberty 
of  conscience.  At  his  hospitable  residence  the  leading 
spirits  of  the  sect  were  warmly  welcomed.  George  Fox 
and  William  Penn  seem  to  have  been  frequent  guests. 
We  find  that  in  1683  he  was  arrested  for  seditious  publica- 
tions when  on  the  eve  of  hastening  to  his  early  friend 
Gulielma,  who,  in  the  absence  of  her  husband,  Governor 
Penn,  had  fallen  dangerously  ill.  On  coming  before  the 
judge,  "  I  told  him/'  says  Ellwood,  "  that  I  had  that 
morning  received  an  express  out  of  Sussex,  that  William 
Penn's  wife  (with  whom  I  had  an  intimate  acquaintance 
and  strict  friendship,  ab  ipsis  fere  incunabilis,  at  least,  a 
teneris  unguiculis)  lay  now  ill,  not  without  great  danger, 
and  that  she  had  expressed  her  desire  that  I  would  come 
to  her  as  soon  as  I  could."  The  judge  said,  "  He  was  very 
sorry  for  Madam  Penn's  illness,"  of  whose  virtues  he 
spoke  very  highly,  but  not  more  than  was  her  due.  Then 
he  told  me  "  that,  for  her  sake,  he  would  do  what  he  could 
to  further  my  visit  to  her."  Escaping  from  the  hands  of 
the  law,  he  visited  his  friend,  who  was  by  this  time  in  a 


THOMAS   ELLWOOD  327 

way  of  recovery,  and  on  his  return  learned  that  the  prose- 
cution had  been  abandoned. 

At  about  this  date  his  narrative  ceases.  We  learn 
from  other  sources  that  he  continued  to  write  and  print 
in  defence  of  his  religious  views  up  to  the  year  of  his 
death,  which  took  place  in  1713.  One  of  his  productions, 
a  poetical  version  of  the  "  Life  of  David,"  may  be  still 
met  with  in  the  old  Quaker  libraries.  On  the  score  of 
poetical  merit  it  is  about  on  a  level  with  Michael  Dray- 
ton's  verses  on  the  same  subject.  As  the  history  of  one 
of  the  firm  confessors  of  the  old  struggle  for  religious 
freedom,  of  a  genial-hearted  and  pleasant  scholar,  the 
friend  of  Penn  and  Milton,  and  the  suggester  of  "  Paradise 
Regained,"  we  trust  our  hurried  sketch  has  not  been  alto- 
gether without  interest;  and  that,  whatever  may  be  the 
religious  views  of  our  readers,  they  have  not  failed  to 
recognise  a  good  and  true  man  in  Thomas  Ellwood. 


ON  A  CERTAIN  CONDESCENSION 
IN  FOREIGNERS 

BY 
JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  who  was  not  only  the  greatest  of  American 
poets,  but  a  charming  and  often  profound  writer  of  prose  as  well,  was  the 
son  of  a  clergyman,  and  was  born  in  Cambridge,  Mass.,  February  22, 
1819.  He  was  graduated  at  Harvard  in  1838,  studied  in  the  Law  School, 
and  was  admitted  to  the  bar  in  1840,  but  did  not  practise.  In  1843,  with 
Robert  Carter,  he  edited  "The  Pioneer,"  a  magazine  that  numbered 
among  its  contributors  Hawthorne,  Poe,  John  Neal,  Whittier,  William 
W.  Story,  and  Elizabeth  Barrett ;  but  after  the  third  number  it  failed, 
through  the  bankruptcy  of  the  publisher.  In  1844  Lowell  married  Maria 
White,  who  was  the  author  of  a  few  fine  poems,  and  whose  strong  anti- 
slavery  sentiments  are  believed  to  have  shown  their  influence  in  some  of 
his  most  famous  work.  His  earliest  volumes  of  poetry  were  scholarly 
but  not  remarkable.  His  first  literary  triumph  was  the  "  Biglow  Pa- 
pers," published  serially  in  i846-'48,  a  satire  on  slavery  and  the  Mexican 
War.  He  wrote  a  great  deal  for  magazines,  and  in  1855  succeeded  Long- 
fellow as  Professor  of  Modern  Languages  at  Harvard,  and  in  1857  was 
the  first  editor  of  the  "Atlantic  Monthly."  During  the  civil  war  he  pub- 
lished a  second  series  of  the  "  Biglow  Papers,"  and  at  its  close  wrote  his 
finest  poem,  the  "Commemoration  Ode."  In  1877  he  was  appointed 
United  States  Minister  at  Madrid,  and  in  1880  was  transferred  to  London, 
where  he  remained  till  1885.  While  he  was  Minister  to  England  he  was 
elected  Rector  of  the  University  of  St.  Andrews.  He  delivered  several 
courses  of  lectures  and  single  addresses,  all  of  which  are  entertaining 
reading,  but  he  was  no  orator.  His  critical  studies  of  Shakespeare, 
Dante,  and  other  great  poets  are  masterpieces.  He  died  in  Cambridge, 
August  12,  1891,  leaving  one  child,  a  daughter,  who  has  since  passed 
away.  In  the  last  year  of  his  life  he  prepared  a  revised  edition  of  his 
entire  works,  which  was  published  in  eleven  volumes  (four  of  poetry  and 
seven  of  prose)  by  Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  through  whose  cour- 
tesy one  of  his  most  famous  essays  is  presented  here.  It  is  protected  by 
their  copyright. 


ON  A  CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN 
FOREIGNERS 

WALKING  one  day  toward  the  village,  as  we  used 
to  call  it  in  the  good  old  days,  when  almost  every 
dweller  in  the  town  had  been  born  in  it,  I  was 
enjoying  that  delicious  sense  of  disenthralment  from  the 
actual  which  the  deepening  twilight  brings  with  it,  giving 
as  it  does  a  sort  of  obscure  novelty  to  things  familiar.  The 
coolness,  the  hush,  broken  only  by  the  distant  bleat  of 
some  belated  goat,  querulous  to  be  disburdened  of  her 
milky  load,  the  few  faint  stars,  more  guessed  as  yet  than 
seen,  the  sense  that  the  coming  dark  would  so  soon  fold 
me  in  the  secure  privacy  of  its  disguise — all  things  com- 
bined in  a  result  as  near  absolute  peace  as  can  be  hoped 
for  by  a  man  who  knows  that  there  is  a  writ  out  against 
him  in  the  hands  of  the  printer's  devil.  For  the  moment  I 
was  enjoying  the  blessed  privilege  of  thinking  without 
being  called  on  to  stand  and  deliver  what  I  thought  to  the 
small  public  who  are  good  enough  to  take  any  interest 
therein.  I  love  old  ways,  and  the  path  I  was  walking  felt 
kindly  to  the  feet  it  had  known  for  almost  fifty  years. 
How  many  fleeting  impressions  it  had  shared  with  me! 
How  many  times  I  had  lingered  to  study  the  shadows 
of  the  leaves  mezzotinted  upon  the  turf  that  edged 
it  by  the  moon,  of  the  bare  boughs  etched  with  a  touch 
beyond  Rembrandt  by  the  same  unconscious  artist  on  the 
smooth  page  of  snow!  If  I  turned  round,  through  dusky 
tree-gaps  came  the  first  twinkle  of  evening  lamps  in  the 
dear  old  homestead.  On  Corey's  Hill  I  could  see  these 
tiny  pharoses  of  love  and  home  and  sweet  domestic 
thoughts  flash  out  one  by  one  across  the  blackening  salt- 
meadow  between.  How  much  has  not  kerosene  added  to 
the  cheerfulness  of  our  evening  landscape!  A  pair  of 

331 


LOWELL 

night-herons  flapped  heavily  over  me  toward  the  hidden 
river.  The  war  was  ended.  I  might  walk  townward  with- 
out that  aching  dread  of  bulletins  that  had  darkened  the 
July  sunshine  and  twice  made  the  scarlet  leaves  of  Octo- 
ber seem  stained  with  blood.  I  remembered  with  a  pang, 
half-proud,  half-painful,  how,  so  many  years  ago,  I  had 
walked  over  the  same  path  and  felt  round  my  finger  the 
soft  pressure  of  a  little  hand  that  was  one  day  to  harden 
with  faithful  grip  of  sabre.  On  how  many  paths,  leading 
to  how  many  homes  where  proud  Memory  does  all  she  can 
to  fill  up  the  fireside  gaps  with  shining  shapes,  must  not 
men  be  walking  in  such  pensive  mood  as  I?  Ah,  young 
heroes,  safe  in  immortal  youth  as  those  of  Homer,  you 
at  least  carried  your  ideal  hence  untarnished!  It  is  locked 
for  you  beyond  moth  or  rust  in  the  treasure-chamber  of 
death. 

Is  not  a  country,  I  thought,  that  has  had  such  as 
they  in  it,  that  could  give  such  as  they  a  brave  joy 
in  dying  for  it,  worth  something,  then?  And  as  I  felt 
more  and  more  the  soothing  magic  of  evening's  cool 
palm  upon  my  temples,  as  my  fancy  came  home  from  its 
revery,  arfd  my  senses,  with  reawakened  curiosity,  ran  to 
the  front  windows  again  from  the  viewless  closet  of  ab- 
straction, and  felt  a  strange  charm  in  finding  the  old  tree 
and  shabby  fence  still  there  under  the  travesty  of  falling 
night,  nay,  were  conscious  of  an  unsuspected  newness  in 
familiar  stars  and  the  fading  outlines  of  hills  my  earliest 
horizon,  I  was  conscious  of  an  immortal  soul,  and  could 
not  but  rejoice  in  the  unwaning  goodliness  of  the  world 
into  which  I  had  been  born  without  any  merit  of  my  own. 
I  thought  of  dear  Henry  Vaughan's  rainbow,  "  Still  young 
and  fine!  "  I  remembered  people  who  had  to  go  over  to 
the  Alps  to  learn  what  the  divine  silence  of  snow  was,  who 
must  run  to  Italy  before  they  were  conscious  of  the  mir- 
acle wrought  every  day  under  their  very  noses  by  the 
sunset,  who  must  call  upon  the  Berkshire  Hills  to  teach 
them  what  a  painter  autumn  was,  while  close  at  hand  the 
Fresh  Pond  meadows  made  all  oriels  cheap  with  hues  that 
showed  as  if  a  sunset  cloud  had  been  wrecked  among  their 
maples.  One  might  be  worse  off  than  even  in  America, 
I  thought.  There  are  some  things  so  elastic  that  even 


CONDESCENSION    IN   FOREIGNERS  333 

the  heavy  roller  of  democracy  can  not  flatten  them  alto- 
gether down.  The  mind  can  weave  itself  warmly  in  the 
cocoon  of  its  own  thoughts  and  dwell  a  hermit  anywhere.  A 
country  without  traditions,  without  ennobling  associations, 
a  scramble  of  parvenus,  with  a  horrible  consciousness  of 
shoddy  running  through  politics,  manners,  art,  literature, 
nay,  religion  itself?  I  confess  it  did  not  seem  so  to  me 
there  in  that  illimitable  quiet,  that  serene  self-possession 
of  Nature,  where  Collins  might  have  brooded  his  "  Ode 
to  Evening,"  or  where  those  verses  on  Solitude  in  Dods- 
ley's  "  Collection,"  that  Hawthorne  liked  so  much,  might 
have  been  composed.  Traditions?  Granting  that  we  had 
none,  all  that  is  worth  having  in  them  is  the  common 
property  of  the  soul — an  estate  in  gavelkind  for  all  the 
sons  of  Adam — and,  moreover,  if  a  man  can  not  stand 
on  his  two  feet  (the  prime  quality  of  whoever  has  left  any 
tradition  behind  him),  were  it  not  better  for  him  to  be 
honest  about  it  at  once,  and  go  down  on  all  fours?  And 
for  associations,  if  one  have  not  the  wit  to  make  them  for 
himself  out  of  native  earth,  no  ready-made  ones  of  other 
men  will  avail  much.  Lexington  is  none  the  worse  to  me 
for  not  being  in  Greece,  nor  Gettysburg  that  its  name  is 
not  Marathon.  "  Blessed  old  fields,"  I  was  just  exclaim- 
ing to  myself,  like  one  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  heroes,  "  dear 
acres,  innocently  secure  from  history,  which  these  eyes 
first  beheld,  may  you  be  also  those  to  which  they  shall 
at  last  slowly  darken!  "  when  I  was  interrupted  by  a  voice 
which  asked  me  in  German  whether  I  was  the  Herr  Pro- 
fessor, Doctor  So-and-so?  The  "  Doctor  "  was  by  brevet 
or  vaticination,  to  make  the  grade  easier  to  my  pocket. 

One  feels  so  intimately  assured  that  one  is  made  up, 
in  parts,  of  shreds  and  leavings  of  the  past,  in  part  of 
the  interpolations  of  other  people,  that  an  honest  man 
would  be  slow  in  saying  yes  to  such  a  question.  But 
"  my  name  is  So-and-so  "  is  a  safe  answer,  and  I  gave  it. 
While  I  had  been  romancing  with  myself,  the  street-lamps 
had  been  lighted,  and  it  was  under  one  of  these  detectives 
that  have  robbed  the  Old  Road  of  its  privilege  of  sanctuary 
after  nightfall  that  I  was  ambushed  by  my  foe.  The  inex- 
orable villain  had  taken  my  description,  it  appears,  that  I 
might  have  the  less  chance  to  escape  him.  Dr.  Holmes 

22 


334  LOWELL 

tells  us  that  we  change  our  substance  not  every  seven 
years,  as  was  once  believed,  but  with  every  breath  we 
draw.  Why  had  I  not  the  wit  to  avail  myself  of  the  subter- 
fuge, and,  like  Peter,  to  renounce  my  identity,  especially, 
as  in  certain  moods  of  mind,  I  have  often  more  than 
doubted  of  it  myself?  When  a  man  is,  as  it  were,  his  own 
front  door,  and  is  thus  knocked  at,  why  may  he  not  assume 
the  right  of  that  sacred  wood  to  make  every  house  a 
castle,  by  denying  himself  to  all  visitations?  I  was  truly 
not  at  home  when  the  question  was  put  to  me,  but  had 
to  recall  myself  from  all  out-of-doors,  and  to  piece  my 
self-consciousness  hastily  together  as  well  as  I  could  be- 
fore I  answered  it. 

I  knew  perfectly  well  what  was  coming.  It  is  seldom 
that  debtors  or  good  Samaritans  waylay  people  under  gas- 
lamps  in  order  to  force  money  upon  them,  so  far  as  I 
have  seen  or  heard.  I  was  also  aware,  from  considerable 
experience,  that  every  foreigner  is  persuaded  that,  by 
doing  this  country  the  favour  of  coming  to  it,  he  has  laid 
every  native  thereof  under  an  obligation,  pecuniary  or 
other,  as  the  case  may  be,  whose  discharge  he  is  entitled 
to  on  demand  duly  made  in  person  or  by  letter.  Too 
much  learning  (of  this  kind)  had  made  me  mad  in  the  pro- 
vincial sense  of  the  word.  I  had  begun  life  with  the 
theory  of  giving  something  to  every  beggar  that  came 
along,  though  sure  of  never  finding  a  native-born  coun- 
tryman among  them.  In  a  small  way,  I  was  resolved  to 
emulate  Hatem  Tai's  tent,  with  its  three  hundred  and 
sixty-five  entrances,  one  for  every  day  in  the  year — I  know 
not  whether  he  was  astronomer  enough  to  add  another  for 
leap-years.  The  beggars  were  a  kind  of  German-silver 
aristocracy;  not  real  plate,  to  be  sure,  but  better  than 
nothing.  Where  everybody  was  overworked,  they  sup- 
plied the  comfortable  equipoise  of  absolute  leisure,  so 
aesthetically  needful.  Besides,  I  was  but  too  conscious  of 
a  vagrant  fibre  in  myself,  which  too  often  thrilled  me  in  my 
solitary  walks  with  the  temptation  to  wander  on  into  in- 
finite space,  and  by  a  single  spasm  of  resolution  to  eman- 
cipate myself  from  the  drudgery  of  prosaic  serfdom  to  re- 
spectability and  the  regular  course  of  things.  This 
prompting  has  been  at  times  my  familiar  demon,  and  I 


CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS  335 

could  not  but  feel  a  kind  of  respectful  sympathy  for  men 
who  had  dared  what  I  had  only  sketched  out  to  myself  as 
a  splendid  possibility.  For  seven  years  I  helped  maintain 
one  heroic  man  on  an  imaginary  journey  to  Portland — 
as  fine  an  example  as  I  have  ever  known  of  hopeless 
loyalty  to  an  ideal.  I  assisted  another  so  long  in  a  fruit- 
less attempt  to  reach  Mecklenburg-Schwerin,  that  at  last 
we  grinned  in  each  other's  faces  when  we  met,  like  a 
couple  of  augurs.  He  was  possessed  by  this  harmless 
mania  as  some  are  by  the  north  pole,  and  I  shall  never 
forget  his  look  of  regretful  compassion  (as  for  one  who 
was  sacrificing  his  higher  life  to  the  fleshpots  of  Egypt) 
when  I  at  last  advised  him  somewhat  strenuously  to  go 

to  the  D ,  whither  the  road  was  so  much  travelled  that 

he  could  not  miss  it.  General  Banks,  in  his  noble  zeal 
for  the  honour  of  his  country,  would  confer  on  the  Secre- 
tary of  State  the  power  of  imprisoning,  in  case  of  war, 
all  these  seekers  of  the  unattainable,  thus  by  a  stroke  of 
the  pen  annihilating  the  single  poetic  element  in  our  hum- 
drum life.  Alas!  not  everybody  has  the  genius  to  be  a 
Bobbin-Boy,  or  doubtless  all  these  also  would  have  chosen 
that  more  prosperous  line  of  life!  But  moralists,  soci- 
ologists, political  economists,  and  taxes  have  slowly  con- 
vinced me  that  my  beggarly  sympathies  were  a  sin  against 
society.  Especially  was  the  Buckle  doctrine  of  averages 
(so  flattering  to  our  free-will)  persuasive  with  me;  for  as 
there  must  be  in  every  year  a  certain  number  who  would 
bestow  an  alms  on  these  abridged  editions  of  the  Wan- 
dering Jew,  the  withdrawal  of  my  quota  could  make  no 
possible  difference,  since  some  destined  proxy  must  always 
step  forward  to  fill  my  gap.  Just  so  many  misdirected 
letters  every  year  and  no  more !  Would  it  were  as  easy  to 
reckon  up  the  number  of  men  on  whose  backs  fate  has 
written  the  wrong  address,  so  that  they  arrive  by  mistake 
in  Congress  and  other  places  where  they  do  not  belong? 
May  not  these  wanderers  of  whom  I  speak  have  been  sent 
into  the  world  without  any  proper  address  at  all?  Where 
is  our  Dead-Letter  Office  for  such?  And  if  wiser  social 
arrangements  should  furnish  us  with  something  of  the 
sort,  fancy  (horrible  thought!)  how  many  a  workingman's 
friend  (a  kind  of  industry  in  which  the  labour  is  light  and, 


336  LOWELL 

the  wages  heavy)  would  be  sent  thither  because  not  called 
for  in  the  office  where  he  at  present  lies! 

But  I  am  leaving  my  new  acquaintance  too  long  under 
the  lamp-post.  The  same  Gano  which  had  betrayed  me 
to  him  revealed  to  me  a  well-set  young  man  of  about  half 
my  own  age,  as  well  dressed,  so  far  as  I  could  see,  as  I 
was,  and  with  every  natural  qualification  for  getting  his 
own  livelihood  as  good,  if  not  better,  than  my  own.  He 
had  been  reduced  to  the  painful  necessity  of  calling  upon 
me  by  a  series  of  crosses  beginning  with  the  Baden  Revo- 
lution (for  which,  I  own,  he  seemed  rather  young — but 
perhaps  he  referred  to  a  kind  of  revolution  practised  every 
season  at  Baden-Baden),  continued  by  repeated  failures  in 
business,  for  amounts  which  must  convince  me  of  his  en- 
tire respectability,  and  ending  with  our  Civil  War.  Dur- 
ing the  latter  he  had  served  with  distinction  as  a  soldier, 
taking  a  main  part  in  every  important  battle,  with  a  rapid 
list  of  which  he  favoured  me,  and  no  doubt  would  have 
admitted  that,  impartial  as  Jonathan  Wild's  great  ancestor, 
he  had  been  on  both  sides,  had  I  baited  him  with  a  few 
hints  of  conservative  opinions  on  a  subject  so  distressing 
to  a  gentleman  wishing  to  profit  by  one's  sympathy  and 
unhappily  doubtful  as  to  which  way  it  might  lean.  For 
all  these  reasons,  and,  as  he  seemed  to  imply,  for  his  merit 
in  consenting  to  be  born  in  Germany,  he  considered  him- 
self my  natural  creditor  to  the  extent  of  five  dollars,  which 
he  would  handsomely  consent  to  accept  in  greenbacks, 
though  he  preferred  specie.  The  offer  was  certainly  a 
generous  one,  and  the  claim  presented  with  an  assurance 
that  carried  conviction.  But,  unhappily,  I  had  been  led 
to  remark  a  curious  natural  phenomenon.  If  I  was  ever 
weak  enough  to  give  anything  to  a  petitioner  of  whatever 
nationality,  it  always  rained  decayed  compatriots  of  his  for 
a  month  after.  Post  hoc,  ergo  propter  hoc,  may  not  always 
be  safe  logic,  but  here  I  seemed  to  perceive  a  natural  con- 
nection of  cause  and  effect.  Now,  a  few  days  before  I  had 
been  so  tickled  with  a  paper  (professedly  written  by  a 
benevolent  American  clergyman)  certifying  that  the  bearer, 
a  hard-working  German,  had  long  "  sofered  with  rheumatic 
paints  in  his  limps/'  that,  after  copying  the  passage  into  my 
notebook,  I  thought  it  but  fair  to  pay  a  trifling  honora- 


CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS  337 

rium  to  the  author.  I  had  pulled  the  string  of  the  shower- 
bath!  It  had  been  running  shipwrecked  sailors  for  some 
time,  but  forthwith  it  began  to  pour  Teutons,  redolent  of 
lager-bier.  I  could  not  help  associating  the  apparition  of 
my  new  friend  with  this  series  of  otherwise  unaccountable 
phenomena.  I  accordingly  made  up  my  mind  to  deny  the 
debt,  and  modestly  did  so,  pleading  a  native  bias  toward 
impecuniosity  to  the  full  as  strong  as  his  own.  He  took 
a  high  tone  with  me  at  once,  such  as  an  honest  man  would 
naturally  take  with  a  confessed  repudiator.  He  even 
brought  down  his  proud  stomach  so  far  as  to  join  himself 
to  me  for  the  rest  of  my  townward  walk,  that  he  might 
give  me  his  views  of  the  American  people,  and  thus  inclu- 
sively of  myself. 

I  know  not  whether  it  is  because  I  am  pigeon-livered 
and  lack  gall,  or  whether  it  is  from  an  overmastering  sense 
of  drollery,  but  I  am  apt  to  submit  to  such  bastings  with 
a  patience  which  afterward  surprises  me,  being  not  with- 
out my  share  of  warmth  in  the  blood.  Perhaps  it  is  be- 
cause I  so  often  meet  with  young  persons  who  know 
vastly  more  than  I  do,  and  especially  with  so  many  for- 
eigners whose  knowledge  of  this  country  is  superior  to 
my  own.  However  it  may  be,  I  listened  for  some  time 
with  tolerable  composure  as  my  self-appointed  lecturer 
gave  me  in  detail  his  opinions  of  my  country  and  its 
people.  America,  he  informed  me,  was  without  arts,  sci- 
ence, literature,  culture,  or  any  native  hope  of  supplying 
them.  We  were  a  people  wholly  given  to  money-getting, 
and  who,  having  got  it,  knew  no  other  use  for  it  than  to 
hold  it  fast.  I  am  fain  to  confess  that  I  felt  a  sensible 
itching  of  the  biceps,  and  that  my  fingers  closed  with  such 
a  grip  as  he  had  just  informed  me  was  one  of  the  effects 
of  our  unhappy  climate.  But  happening  just  then  to  be 
where  I  could  avoid  temptation  by  dodging  down  a  by- 
street, I  hastily  left  him  to  finish  his  diatribe  to  the  lamp- 
post, which  could  stand  it  better  than  I.  That  young 
man  will  never  know  how  near  he  came  to  being  assaulted 
by  a  respectable  gentleman  of  middle  age,  at  the  corner 
of  Church  Street.  I  have  never  felt  quite  satisfied  that 
did  all  my  duty  by  him  in  not  knocking  him  down.  But 
perhaps  he  might  have  knocked  me  down,  and  then? 


338 


LOWELL 


The  capacity  of  indignation  makes  an  essential  part 
of  the  outfit  of  every  honest  man,  but  I  am  inclined  to 
doubt  whether  he  is  a  wise  one  who  allows  himself  to 
act  upon  its  first  hints.  It  should  be  rather,  I  suspect,  a 
latent  heat  in  the  blood,  which  makes  itself  felt  in  char- 
acter, a  steady  reserve  for  the  brain,  warming  the  ovum  of 
thought  to  life,  rather  than  cooking  it  by  a  too  hasty  en- 
thusiasm in  reaching  the  boiling  point.  As  my  pulse 
gradually  fell  back  to  its  normal  beat,  I  reflected  that  I 
had  been  uncomfortably  near  making  a  fool  of  myself — 
a  handy  salve  of  euphuism  for  our  vanity,  though  it  does 
not  always  make  a  just  allowance  to  Nature  for  her  share 
in  the  business.  What  possible  claim  had  my  Teutonic 
friend  to  rob  me  of  my  composure?  I  am  not,  I  think, 
specially  thin-skinned  as  to  other  people's  opinions  of 
myself,  having,  as  I  conceive,  later  and  fuller  intelligence 
on  that  point  than  anybody  else  can  give  me.  Life  is  con- 
tinually weighing  us  in  very  sensitive  scales,  and  telling 
every  one  of  us  precisely  what  his  real  weight  is  to  the 
last  grain  of  dust.  Whoever  at  fifty  does  not  rate  himself 
quite  as  low  as  most  of  his  acquaintance  would  be  likely 
to  put  him,  must  be  either  a  fool  or  a  great  man,  and  I 
humbly  disclaim  being  either.  But  if  I  was  not  smarting 
in  person  from  any  scattering  shot  of  my  late  companion's 
commination,  why  should  I  grow  hot  at  any  implication 
of  my  country  therein?  Surely  her  shoulders  are  broad 
enough,  if  yours  or  mine  are  not,  to  bear  up  under  a  con- 
siderable avalanche  of  this  kind.  It  is  the  bit  of  truth  in 
every  slander,  the  hint  of  likeness  in  every  caricature,  that 
makes  us  smart.  "Art  thou  there,  old  Truepenny?" 
How  did  your  blade  know  its  way  so  well  to  that  one  loose 
rivet  in  our  armour?  I  wondered  whether  Americans  were 
over-sensitive  in  this  respect,  whether  they  were  more 
touchy  than  other  folks.  On  the  whole,  I  thought  we 
were  not.  Plutarch,  who  at  least  had  studied  philosophy, 
if  he  had  not  mastered  it,  could  not  stomach  something 
Herodotus  had  said  of  Bceotia,  and  devoted  an  essay  to 
showing  up  the  delightful  old  traveller's  malice  and  ill- 
breeding.  French  editors  leave  out  of  Montaigne's 
'  Travels  "  some  remarks  of  his  about  France,  for  reasons 
best  known  to  themselves.  Pachydermatous  Deutschland, 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL 
From  an  engraving  by  Alfred  B.  Hall 


CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS  339 

covered  with  trophies  from  every  field  of  letters,  still 
winces  under  that  question  which  Pere  Bouhours  put  two 
centuries  ago,  Si  un  Allemand  peut  etre  bel-esprit?  John 
Bull  grew  apoplectic  with  angry  amazement  at  the  au- 
dacious persiflage  of  Piickler-Muskau.  To  be  sure,  he 
was  a  prince,  but  that  was  not  all  of  it,  for  a  chance  phrase 
of  gentle  Hawthorne  sent  a  spasm  through  all  the  journals 
of  England.  Then  this  tenderness  is  not  peculiar  to  us? 
Console  yourself,  dear  man  and  brother,  whatever  else 
you  may  be  sure  of,  be  sure  at  least  of  this,  that  you 
are  dreadfully  like  other  people.  Human  nature  has  a 
much  greater  genius  for  sameness  than  for  originality,  or 
the  world  would  be  at  a  sad  pass  shortly.  The  surprising 
thing  is  that  men  have  such  a  taste  for  this  somewhat 
musty  flavour,  that  an  Englishman,  for  example,  should 
feel  himself  defrauded,  nay,  even  outraged,  when  he  comes 
over  here  and  finds  a  people  speaking  what  he  admits  to 
be  something  like  English,  and  yet  so  very  different  from 
(or,  as  he  would  say,  to)  those  he  left  at  home.  Nothing, 
I  am  sure,  equals  my  thankfulness  when  I  meet  an  Eng- 
lishman who  is  not  like  every  other,  or,  I  may  add,  an 
American  of  the  same  odd  turn. 

Certainly  it  is  no  shame  to  a  man  that  he  should  be  as 
nice  about  his  country  as  about  his  sweetheart,  and  who 
ever  heard  even  the  friendliest  appreciation  of  that  un- 
expressive  she  that  did  not  seem  to  fall  infinitely  short? 
Yet  it  would  hardly  be  wise  to  hold  every  one  an  enemy 
who  could  not  see  her  with  our  own  enchanted  eyes.  It 
seems  to  be  the  common  opinion  of  foreigners  that  Ameri- 
cans are  too  tender  upon  this  point.  Perhaps  we  are;  and 
if  so,  there  must  be  a  reason  for  it.  Have  we  had  fair 
play?  Could  the  eyes  of  what  is  called  Good  Society 
(though  it  is  so  seldom  true  either  to  the  adjective  or 
noun)  look  upon  a  nation  of  democrats  with  any  chance 
of  receiving  an  undistorted  image?  Were  not  those, 
moreover,  who  found  in  the  old  order  of  things  an  earthly 
paradise,  paying  them  quarterly  dividends  for  the  wisdom 
of  their  ancestors,  with  the  punctuality  of  the  seasons, 
unconsciously  bribed  to  misunderstand  if  not  to  misrepre- 
sent us?  Whether  at  war  or  at  peace,  there  we  were,  a 
standing  menace  to  all  earthly  paradises  of  that  kind,  fatal 


340 


LOWELL 


underminers  of  the  ver^  credit  on  which  the  dividends 
were  based,  all  the  more  hateful  and  terrible  that  our  de- 
structive agency  was  so  insidious,  working  invisible  in  the 
elements,  as  it  seemed,  active  while  they  slept,  and  coming 
upon  them  in  the  darkness  like  an  armed  man.  Could 
Laius  have  the  proper  feelings  of  a  father  toward  CEdipus, 
announced  as  his  destined  destroyer  by  infallible  oracles, 
and  felt  to  be  such  by  every  conscious  fibre  of  his  soul? 
For  more  than  a  century  the  Dutch  were  the  laughing- 
stock of  polite  Europe.  They  were  butter-firkins,  swillers 
of  beer  and  schnapps,  and  their  vrouws  from  whom  Hol- 
bein painted  the  ail-but  loveliest  of  Madonnas,  Rem- 
brandt the  graceful  girl  who  sits  immortal  on  his  knee  in 
Dresden,  and  Rubens  his  abounding  goddesses,  were  the 
synonymes  of  clumsy  vulgarity.  Even  so  late  as  Irving 
the  ships  of  the  greatest  navigators  in  the  world  were 
represented  as  sailing  equally  well  stern-foremost.  That 
the  aristocratic  Venetians  should  have 

"  Riveted  with  gigantic  piles 
Thorough  the  centre  their  new-catched  miles," 

was  heroic.  But  the  far  more  marvellous  achievement  of 
the  Dutch  in  the  same  kind  was  ludicrous  even  to  repub- 
lican Marvell.  Meanwhile,  during  that  very  century  of 
scorn,  they  were  the  best  artists,  sailors,  merchants,  bank- 
ers, printers,  scholars,  jurisconsults,  and  statesmen  in  Eu- 
rope, and  the  genius  of  Motley  has  revealed  them  to  us, 
earning  a  right  to  themselves  by  the  most  heroic  struggle 
in  human  annals.  But,  alas!  they  were  not  merely  simple 
burghers  who  had  fairly  made  themselves  high  mighti- 
nesses, and  could  treat  on  equal  terms  with  anointed  kings, 
but  their  commonwealth  carried  in  its  bosom  the  germs 
of  democracy.  They  even  unmuzzled,  at  least  after  dark, 
that  dreadful  mastiff,  the  press,  whose  scent  is,  or  ought 
to  be,  so  keen  for  wolves  in  sheep's  clothing  and  for  cer- 
tain other  animals  in  lions'  skins.  They  made  fun  of 
sacred  majesty,  and,  what  was  worse,  managed  uncom- 
monly well  without  it.  In  an  age  when  periwigs  made 
so  large  a  part  of  the  natural  dignity  of  man,  people  with 
such  a  turn  of  mind  were  dangerous.  How  could  they 
seem  other  than  vulgar  and  hateful? 


CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS 


341 


In  the  natural  course  of  things  we  succeeded  to  this 
unenviable  position  of  general  butt.  The  Dutch  had 
thriven  under  it  pretty  well,  and  there  was  hope  that  we 
could  at  least  contrive  to  worry  along.  And  we  certainly 
did  in  a  very  redoubtable  fashion.  Perhaps  we  deserved 
some  of  the  sarcasm  more  than  our  Dutch  predecessors 
in  office.  We  had  nothing  to  boast  of  in  arts  or  letters, 
and  were  given  to  bragging  overmuch  of  our  merely  ma- 
terial prosperity,  due  quite  as  much  to  the  virtue  of  our 
continent  as  to  our  own.  There  was  some  truth  in  Car- 
lyle's  sneer,  after  all.  Till  we  had  succeeded  in  some 
higher  way  than  this  we  had  only  the  success  of  physical 
growth.  Our  greatness,  like  that  of  enormous  Russia, 
was  greatness  on  the  map — barbarian  mass  only;  but  had 
we  gone  down,  like  that  other  Atlantis,  in  some  vast 
cataclysm,  we  should  have  covered  but  a  pin's  point  on 
the  chart  of  memory,  compared  with  those  ideal  spaces 
occupied  by  tiny  Attica  and  cramped  England.  At  the 
same  time  our  critics  somewhat  too  easily  forgot  that 
material  must  make  ready  the  foundation  for  ideal  tri- 
umphs, that  the  arts  have  no  chance  in  poor  countries. 
But  it  must  be  allowed  that  democracy  stood  for  a  great 
deal  in  our  shortcoming.  The  "  Edinburgh  Review " 
never  would  have  thought  of  asking,  "  Who  reads  a  Rus- 
sian book?  "  and  England  was  satisfied  with  iron  from 
Sweden  without  being  impertinently  inquisitive  after  her 
painters  and  statuaries.  Was  it  that  they  expected  too 
much  from  the  mere  miracle  of  freedom?  Is  it  not  the 
highest  art  of  a  republic  to  make  men  of  flesh  and  blood, 
and  not  the  marble  ideals  of  such?  It  may  be  fairly 
doubted  whether  we  have  produced  this  higher  type  of 
man  yet.  Perhaps  it  is  the  collective,  not  the  individual, 
humanity  that  is  to  have  a  chance  of  nobler  develop- 
ment among  us.  We  shall  see.  We  have  a  vast  amount 
of  imported  ignorance,  and,  still  worse,  of  native  ready- 
made  knowledge,  to  digest  before  even  the  preliminaries 
of  such  a  consummation  can  be  arranged.  We  have  got 
to  learn  that  statesmanship  is  the  most  complicated  of 
all  arts,  and  to  come  back  to  the  apprenticeship  system 
too  hastily  abandoned.  At  present  we  trust  a  man  with 
making  constitutions  on  less  proof  of  competence  than 


342  LOWELL 

we  should  demand  before  we  gave  him  our  shoe  to  patch. 
We  have  nearly  reached  the  limit  of  the  reaction  from 
the  old  notion,  which  paid  too  much  regard  to  birth  and 
station  as  qualifications  for  office,  and  have  touched  the 
extreme  point  in  the  opposite  direction,  putting  the  high- 
est of  human  functions  up  at  auction  to  be  bid  for  by 
any  creature  capable  of  going  upright  on  two  legs.  In 
some  places  we  have  arrived  at  a  point  at  which  civil 
society  is  no  longer  possible,  and  already  another  reaction 
has  begun,  not  backward  to  the  old  system,  but  toward 
fitness  either  from  natural  aptitude  or  special  training. 
But  will  it  always  be  safe  to  let  evils  work  their  own  cure 
by  becoming  unendurable?  Every  one  of  them  leaves 
its  taint  in  the  constitution  of  the  body  politic,  each  in 
itself  perhaps  trifling,  yet  all  together  powerful  for  evil. 

But  whatever  we  might  do  or  leave  undone,  we  were 
not  genteel,  and  it  was  uncomfortable  to  be  continually 
reminded  that,  though  we  should  boast  that  we  were  the 
Great  West  till  we  were  black  in  the  face,  it  did  not  bring 
us  an  inch  nearer  to  the  world's  West  End.  That  sacred 
inclosure  of  respectabilty  was  tabooed  to  us.  The  Holy 
Alliance  did  not  inscribe  us  on  its  visiting  list.  The  Old 
World  of  wigs  and  orders  and  liveries  would  shop  with 
us,  but  wre  must  ring  at  the  area  bell,  and  not  venture 
to  awaken  the  more  august  clamours  of  the  knocker.  Our 
manners,  it  must  be  granted,  had  none  of  those  graces 
that  stamp  the  caste  of  Vere  de  Vere,  in  whatever  museum 
of  British  antiquities  they  may  be  hidden.  In  short,  we 
were  vulgar. 

This  was  one  of  those  horribly  vague  accusations  the 
victim  of  which  has  no  defence.  An  umbrella  is  of  no 
avail  against  a  Scotch  mist.  It  envelops  you,  it  pene- 
trates at  every  pore,  it  wets  you  through  without  seem- 
ing to  wet  you  at  all.  Vulgarity  is  an  eighth  deadly  sin, 
added  to  the  list  in  these  latter  days,  and  worse  than  all 
the  others  put  together,  since  it  perils  your  salvation  in 
this  world — far  the  more  important  of  the  two  in  the 
minds  of  most  men.  It  profits  nothing  to  draw  nice  dis- 
tinctions between  essential  and  conventional,  for  the  con- 
vention in  this  case  is  the  essence,  and  you  may  break 
every  command  of  the  Decalogue  with  perfect  good  breed- 


CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS  343 

ing — nay,  if  you  are  adroit,  without  losing  caste.  We, 
indeed,  had  it  not  to  lose,  for  we  had  never  gained  it. 
"  How  am  I  vulgar? "  asks  the  culprit  shudderingly. 
"  Because  thou  art  not  like  unto  us,"  answers  Lucifer,  son 
of  the  morning,  and  there  is  no  more  to  be  said.  The  god 
of  this  world  may  be  a  fallen  angel,  but  he  has  us  there! 
We  were  as  clean — so  far  as  my  observation  goes,  I  think 
we  were  cleaner,  morally  and  physically,  than  the  Eng- 
lish, and  therefore,  of  course,  than  everybody  else.  But 
we  did  not  pronounce  the  diphthong  ou  as  they  did,  and 
we  said  eether  and  not  eyther,  following  therein  the  fashion 
of  our  ancestors,  who  unhappily  could  bring  over  no  Eng- 
lish better  than  Shakespeare's;  and  we  did  not  stammer  as 
they  had  learned  to  do  from  the  courtiers,  who  in  this 
way  flattered  the  Hanoverian  king,  a  foreigner  among  the 
people  he  had  come  to  reign  over.  Worse  than  all,  we 
might  have  the  noblest  ideas  and  the  finest  sentiments 
in  the  world,  but  we  vented  them  through  that  organ  by 
which  men  are  led  rather  than  leaders,  though  some  physi- 
ologists would  persuade  us  that  Nature  furnishes  her  cap- 
tains with  a  fine  handle  to  their  faces  that  opportunity 
may  get  a  good  purchase  on  them  for  dragging  them  to 
the  front. 

This  state  of  things  was  so  painful  that  excellent  peo- 
ple were  not  wanting  who  gave  their  whole  genius  to 
reproducing  here  the  original  Bull,  whether  by  gaiters, 
the  cut  of  their  whiskers,  by  a  factitious  brutality  in  their 
tone,  or  by  an  accent  that  was  forever  tripping  and  fall- 
ing flat  over  the  tangled  roots  of  our  common  tongue. 
Martyrs  to  a  false  ideal,  it  never  occurred  to  them  that 
nothing  is  more  hateful  to  gods  and  men  than  a  second- 
rate  Englishman,  and  for  the  very  reason  that  this  planet 
never  produced  a  more  splendid  creature  than  the  first- 
rate  one,  witness  Shakespeare  and  the  Indian  Mutiny. 
Witness  that  truly  sublime  self-abnegation  of  those  pris- 
oners lately  among  the  bandits  of  Greece,  where  average 
men  gave  an  example  of  quiet  fortitude  for  which  all  the 
stoicism  of  antiquity  can  show  no  match.  Witness  the 
wreck  of  the  Birkenhead,  an  example  of  disciplined  hero- 
ism, perhaps  the  most  precious,  as  the  rarest,  of  all.  If 
we  could  contrive  to  be  not  too  unobtrusively  our  simple 


LOWELL 

selves,  we  should  be  the  most  delightful  of  human  beings, 
and  the  most  original;  whereas,  when  the  plating  of  An- 
glicism rubs  off,  as  it  always  will  in  points  that  come  to 
much  wear,  we  are  liable  to  very  unpleasing  conjectures 
about  the  quality  of  the  metal  underneath.  Perhaps  one 
reason  why  the  average  Briton  spreads  himself  here  with 
such  an  easy  air  of  superiority  may  be  owing  to  the  fact 
that  he  meets  with  so  many  bad  imitations  as  to  con- 
clude himself  the  only  real  thing  in  a  wilderness  of  shams. 
He  fancies  himself  moving  through  an  endless  Blooms- 
bury,  where  his  mere  apparition  confers  honour  as  an 
avatar  of  the  court  end  of  the  universe.  Not  a  Bull  of 
them  all  but  is  persuaded  he  bears  Europa  upon  his  back. 
This  is  the  sort  of  fellow  whose  patronage  is  so  divertingly 
insufferable.  Thank  Heaven  he  is  not  the  only  specimen 
of  cater-cousinship  from  the  dear  old  Mother  Island  that 
is  shown  to  us!  Among  genuine  things,  I  know  nothing 
more  genuine  than  the  better  men  whose  limbs  were  made 
in  England.  So  manly  tender,  so  brave,  so  true,  so  war- 
ranted to  wear,  they  make  us  proud  to  feel  that  blood  is 
thicker  than  water. 

But  it  is  not  merely  the  Englishman;  every  European 
candidly  admits  in  himself  some  right  of  primogeniture 
in  respect  of  us,  and  pats  this  shaggy  continent  on  the 
back  with  a  lively  sense  of  generous  unbending.  The 
German  who  plays  the  bass-viol  has  a  well-founded  con- 
tempt, which  he  is  not  always  nice  in  concealing,  for  a 
country  so  few  of  whose  children  ever  take  that  noble 
instrument  between  their  knees.  His  cousin,  the  Ph.  D. 
from  Gottingen,  can  not  help  despising  a  people  who  do 
not  grow  loud  and  red  over  Aryans  and  Turanians,  and 
are  indifferent  about  their  descent  from  either.  The 
Frenchman  feels  an  easy  mastery  in  speaking  his  mother 
tongue,  and  attributes  it  to  some  native  superiority  of 
parts  that  lifts  him  high  above  us  barbarians  of  the  West. 
The  Italian  prima  donna  sweeps  a  curtsy  of  careless  pity 
to  the  overfacile  pit  which  unsexes  her  with  the  bravo! 
innocently  meant  to  show  a  familiarity  with  foreign  usage. 
But  all  without  exception  make  no  secret  of  regarding 
us  as  the  goose  bound  to  deliver  them  a  golden  egg  in 
return  for  their  cackle.  Such  men  as  Agassiz,  Guyot,  and 


CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS 


345 


Goldwin  Smith  come  with  gifts  in  their  hands;  but  since 
it  is  commonly  European  failures  who  bring  hither  their 
remarkable  gifts  and  acquirements,  this  view  of  the  case 
is  sometimes  just  the  least  bit  in  the  world  provoking. 
To  think  what  a  delicious  seclusion  of  contempt  we  en- 
joyed till  California  and  our  own  ostentatious  parvenus, 
flinging  gold  away  in  Europe  that  might  have  endowed 
libraries  at  home,  gave  us  the  ill  repute  of  riches!  What 
a  shabby  downfall  from  the  Arcadia  which  the  French 
officers  of  our  Revolutionary  War  fancied  they  saw  here 
through  Rousseau-tinted  spectacles!  Something  of  Ar- 
cadia there  really  was,  something  of  the  old  age;  and  that 
divine  provincialism  were  cheaply  repurchased  could  we 
have  it  back  again  in  exchange  for  the  tawdry  uphol- 
stery that  has  taken  its  place. 

For  some  reason  or  other  the  European  has  rarely 
been  able  to  see  America  except  in  caricature.  Would 
the  first  "  Review  "  of  the  world  have  printed  the  niaise- 
ries  of  M.  Maurice  Sand  as  a  picture  of  society  in  any 
civilized  country?  M.  Sand,  to  be  sure,  has  inherited 
nothing  of  his  famous  mother's  literary  outfit,  except 
the  pseudonym.  But  since  the  conductors  of  the  "  Re- 
vue "  could  not  have  published  his  story  because  it  was 
clever,  they  must  have  thought  it  valuable  for  its  truth. 
As  true  as  the  last-century  Englishman's  picture  of  Jean 
Crapaud!  We  do  not  ask  to  be  sprinkled  with  rose-water, 
but  may  perhaps  fairly  protest  against  being  drenched 
with  the  rinsings  of  an  unclean  imagination.  The  next 
time  the  "  Revue  "  allows  such  ill-bred  persons  to  throw 
their  slops  out  of  its  first-floor  windows,  let  it  honestly 
preface  the  discharge  with  a  gare  1'eau!  that  we  may  run 
from  under  in  season.  And  M.  Duvergier  de  Hauranne, 
who  knows  how  to  be  entertaining!  I  know  that  le  Fran- 
gais  est  plutot  indiscret  que  confiant,  and  the  pen  slides 
too  easily  when  indiscretions  will  fetch  so  much  a  page; 
but  should  we  not  have  been  tant-soit-peu  more  cautious 
had  we  been  writing  about  people  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Channel?  But  then  it  is  a  fact  in  the  natural  history 
of  the  American  long  familiar  to  Europeans  that  he  ab- 
hors privacy,  knows  not  the  meaning  of  reserve,  lives  in 
hotels  because  of  their  greater  publicity,  and  is  never  so 


346  LOWELL 

pleased  as  when  his  domestic  affairs  (if  he  may  be  said  to 
have  any)  are  paraded  in  the  newspapers.  Barnum,  it  is 
well  known,  represents  perfectly  the  average  national  sen- 
timent in  this  respect.  However  it  be,  we  are  not  treated 
like  other  people,  or  perhaps  I  should  say  like  people  who 
are  ever  likely  to  be  met  with  in  society. 

Is  it  in  the  climate?  Either  I  have  a  false  notion  of 
European  manners,  or  else  the  atmosphere  affects  them 
strangely  when  exported  hither.  Perhaps  they  suffer  from 
the  sea  voyage  like  some  of  the  more  delicate  wines. 
During  our  Civil  War  an  English  gentleman  of  the  high- 
est description  was  kind  enough  to  call  upon  me,  mainly, 
as  it  seemed,  to  inform  me  how  entirely  he  sympathized 
with  the  Confederates,  and  how  sure  he  felt  that  we  could 
never  subdue  them — "  they  were  the  gentlemen  of  the 
country,  you  know."  Another,  the  first  greetings  hardly 
over,  asked  me  how  I  accounted  for  the  universal  meagre- 
ness  of  my  countrymen.  To  a  thinner  man  than  I,  or 
from  a  stouter  man  than  he,  the  question  might  have 
been  offensive.  The  Marquis  of  Hartington l  wore  a 
secession  badge  at  a  public  ball  in  New  York.  In  a  civi- 
lized country  he  might  have  been  roughly  handled;  but 
here,  where  the  bienseances  are  not  so  well  understood, 
of  course  nobody  minded  it.  A  French  traveller  told  me 
he  had  been  a  good  deal  in  the  British  colonies,  and  had 
been  astonished  to  see  how  soon  the  people  became  Amer- 
icanized. He  added,  with  delightful  bonhomie,  and  as 
if  he  were  sure  it  would  charm  me,  that  "  they  even  began 
to  talk  through  their  noses,  just  like  you!  "  I  was  natu- 
rally ravished  with  this  testimony  to  the  assimilating 
power  of  democracy,  and  could  only  reply  that  I  hoped 
they  would  never  adopt  our  democratic  patent  method 
of  seeming  to  settle  one's  honest  debts,  for  they  would 
find  it  paying  through  the  nose  in  the  long  run.  I  am 
a  man  of  the  New  World,  and  do  not  know  precisely  the 
present  fashion  of  May  Fair,  but  I  have  a  kind  of  feeling 
that  if  an  American  (mutato  nomine,  de  te  is  always  fright- 
fully possible)  were  to  do  this  kind  of  thing  under  a 
European  roof,  it  would  induce  some  disagreeable  reflec- 
tions as  to  the  ethical  results  of  democracy.  I  read  the 
other  day  in  print  the  remark  of  a  British  tourist  who 


CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS  347 

had  eaten  large  quantities  of  our  salt,  such  as  it  is  (I  grant 
it  has  not  the  European  savour),  that  the  Americans  were 
hospitable,  no  doubt,  but  that  it  was  partly  because  they 
longed  for  foreign  visitors  to  relieve  the  tedium  of  their 
dead-level  existence,  and  partly  from  ostentation.  What 
shall  we  do?  Shall  we  close  our  doors?  Not  I,  for  one, 
if  I  should  so  have  forfeited  the  friendship  of  L.  S.,  most 
lovable  of  men.  He  somehow  seems  to  find  us  human, 
at  least,  and  so  did  Clough,  whose  poetry  will  one  of  these 
days  perhaps  be  found  to  have  been  the  best  utterance  in 
verse  of  this  generation.  And  T.  H.,  the  mere  grasp  of 
whose  manly  hand  carries  with  it  the  pledge  of  frankness 
and  friendship,  of  an  abiding  simplicity  of  Nature  as  af- 
fecting as  it  is  rare! 

The  fine  old  Tory  aversion  of  former  times  was  not 
hard  to  bear.  There  was  something  even  refreshing  in 
it,  as  in  a  northeaster  to  a  hardy  temperament.  When  a 
British  parson,  travelling  in  Newfoundland  while  the  slash 
of  our  separation  was  still  raw,  after  prophesying  a  glori- 
ous future  for  an  island  that  continued  to  dry  its  fish  under 
the  aegis  of  Saint  George,  glances  disdainfully  over  his 
spectacles  in  parting  at  the  U.  S.  A.,  and  forebodes  for 
them  a  "  speedy  relapse  into  barbarism,"  now  that  they 
have  madly  cut  themselves  off  from  the  humanizing  in- 
fluences of  Britain,  I  smile  with  barbarian  self-conceit. 
But  this  kind  of  thing  became  by  degrees  an  unpleasant 
anachronism.  For  meanwhile  the  young  giant  was  grow- 
ing, was  beginning  indeed  to  feel  tight  in  his  clothes,  was 
obliged  to  let  in  a  gore  here  and  there  in  Texas,  in  Cali- 
fornia, in  New  Mexico,  in  Alaska,  and  had  the  scissors 
and  needle  and  thread  ready  for  Canada  when  the  time 
came.  His  shadow  loomed  like  a  Brocken  spectre  over 
against  Europe — the  shadow  of  what  they  were  coming 
to,  that  was  the  unpleasant  part  of  it.  Even  in  such 
misty  image  as  they  had  of  him  it  was  painfully  evident 
that  his  clothes  were  not  of  any  cut  hitherto  fashionable, 
nor  conceivable  by  a  Bond  Street  tailor — and  this  in  an 
age,  too,  when  everything  depends  upon  clothes,  when, 
if  we  do  not  keep  up  appearances,  the  seeming  solid  frame 
of  this  universe — nay,  your  very  God — would  slump  into 
himself,  like  a  mockery  king  of  snow,  being  nothing,  after 


LOWELL 

all,  but  a  prevailing  mode,  a  make-believe  of  believing. 
From  this  moment  the  young  giant  assumed  the  respect- 
able aspect  of  a  phenomenon,  to  be  got  rid  of  if  possible, 
but  at  any  rate  as  legitimate  a  subject  of  human  study 
as  the  Glacial  period  or  the  Silurian  what-d'ye-call-'ems. 
If  the  man  of  the  primeval  drift  heaps  be  so  absorbingly 
interesting,  why  not  the  man  of  the  drift  that  is  just 
beginning,  of  the  drift  into  whose  irresistible  current  we 
are  just  being  sucked  whether  we  will  or  no?  If  I  were 
in  their  place,  I  confess  I  should  not  be  frightened.  Man 
has  survived  so  much,  and  contrived  to  be  comfortable 
on  this  planet  after  surviving  so  much!  I  am  something 
of  a  Protestant  in  matters  of  government  also,  and  am 
willing  to  get  rid  of  vestments  and  ceremonies  and  to 
come  down  to  bare  benches,  if  only  faith  in  God  take 
the  place  of  a  general  agreement  to  profess  confidence  in 
ritual  and  sham.  Every  mortal  man  of  us  holds  stock 
in  the  only  public  debt  that  is  absolutely  sure  of  payment, 
and  that  is  the  debt  of  the  Maker  of  this  universe  to  the 
universe  he  has  made.  I  have  no  notion  of  selling  out 
my  shares  in  a  panic. 

It  was  something  to  have  advanced  even  to  the  dig- 
nity of  a  phenomenon,  and  yet  I  do  not  know  that  the 
relation  of  the  individual  American  to  the  individual  Eu- 
ropean was  bettered  by  it;  and  that,  after  all,  must  adjust 
itself  comfortably  before  there  can  be  a  right  understand- 
ing between  the  two.  We  had  been  a  desert,  we  became 
a  museum.  People  came  hither  for  scientific  and  not 
social  ends.  The  very  cockney  could  not  complete  his 
education  without  taking  a  vacant  stare  at  us  in  passing. 
But  the  sociologists  (I  think  they  call  themselves  so) 
were  the  hardest  to  bear.  There  was  no  escape.  I  have 
even  known  a  professor  of  this  fearful  science  to  come 
disguised  in  petticoats.  We  were  cross-examined  as  a 
chemist  cross-examines  a  new  substance.  Human?  Yes, 
all  the  elements  are  present,  though  abnormally  combined. 
Civilized?  Hm!  that  needs  a  stricter  assay.  No  ento- 
mologist could  take  a  more  friendly  interest  in  a  strange 
bug.  After  a  few  such  experiences  I,  for  one,  have  felt 
as  if  I  were  merely  one  of  those  horrid  things  preserved 
in  spirits  (and  very  bad  spirits,  too)  in  a  cabinet.  I  was 


CONDESCENSION   IN  FOREIGNERS 


349 


not  the  fellow-being  of  these  explorers:  I  was  a  curiosity; 
I  was  a  specimen.  Hath  not  an  American  organs,  dimen- 
sions, senses,  affections,  passions  even  as  a  European  hath? 
If  you  prick  us,  do  we  not  bleed?  If  you  tickle  us,  do 
we  not  laugh?  I  will  not  keep  on  with  Shylock  to  his 
next  question  but  one. 

Till  after  our  Civil  War  it  never  seemed  to  enter  the 
head  of  any  foreigner,  especially  of  any  Englishman,  that 
an  American  had  what  could  be  called  a  country,  except 
as  a  place  to  eat,  sleep,  and  trade  in.  Then  it  seemed 
to  strike  them  suddenly.  "  By  Jove,  you  know,  fellahs 
don't  fight  like  that  for  a  shop-till!  "  No,  I  rather  think 
not.  To  Americans  America  is  something  more  than  a 
promise  and  an  expectation.  It  has  a  past  and  traditions 
of  its  own.  A  descent  from  men  who  sacrificed  everything 
and  came  hither  not  to  better  their  fortunes,  but  to  plant 
their  idea  in  virgin  soil,  should  be  a  good  pedigree.  There 
was  never  colony  save  this  that  went  forth  not  to  seek 
gold,  but  God.  Is  it  not  as  well  to  have  sprung  from 
such  as  these  as  from  some  burly  beggar  who  came  over 
with  Wilhelmus  Conquestor,  unless,  indeed,  a  line  grow 
better  as  it  runs  farther  away  from  stalwart  ancestors? 
And  for  our  history,  it  is  dry  enough,  no  doubt,  in  the 
books,  but,  for  all  that,  is  of  a  kind  that  tells  in  the  blood. 
I  have  admitted  that  Carlyle's  sneer  had  a  show  of  truth 
in  it.  But  what  does  he  himself,  like  a  true  Scot,  admire 
in  the  Hohenzollerns?  First  of  all,  that  they  were  canny, 
a  thrifty,  forehanded  race.  Next,  that  they  make  a  good 
fight  from  generation  to  generation  with  the  chaos 
around  them.  That  is  precisely  the  battle  which  the  Eng- 
lish race  on  this  continent  has  been  pushing  doughtily 
forward  for  two  centuries  and  a  half.  Doughtily  and 
silently,  for  you  can  not  hear  in  Europe  "  that  crash,  the 
death  song  of  the  perfect  tree,"  that  has  been  going  on 
here  from  sturdy  father  to  sturdy  son,  and  making  this 
continent  habitable  for  the  weaker  Old-World  breed  that 
has  swarmed  to  it  during  the  last  half  century.  If  ever 
men  did  a  good  stroke  of  work  on  this  planet,  it  was  the 
forefathers  of  those  whom  you  are  wondering  whether  it 
would  not.  be  prudent  to  acknowledge  as  far-off  cousins. 
Alas!  man  of  genius,  to  whom  we  owe  so  much,  could 


LOWELL 

you  see  nothing  more  than  the  burning  of  a  foul  chimney 
in  that  clash  of  Michael  and  Satan  which  flamed  up  under 
your  very  eyes? 

Before  our  war  we  were  to  Europe  but  a  huge  mob 
of  adventurers  and  shopkeepers.  Leigh  Hunt  expressed 
it  well  enough  when  he  said  that  he  could  never  think 
of  America  without  seeing  a  gigantic  counter  stretched  all 
along  the  seaboard.  And  Leigh  Hunt,  without  knowing 
it.  had  been  more  than  half  Americanized,  too!  Feudal- 
ism had  by  degrees  made  commerce,  the  great  civilizer, 
contemptible.  But  a  tradesman  with  sword  on  thigh  and 
very  prompt  of  stroke  was  not  only  redoubtable,  he  had 
become  respectable  also.  Few  people,  I  suspect,  alluded 
twice  to  a  needle  in  Sir  John  Hawkwood's  presence,  after 
that  doughty  fighter  had  exchanged  it  for  a  more  dan- 
gerous tool  of  the  same  metal.  Democracy  had  been 
hitherto  only  a  ludicrous  effort  to  reverse  the  laws  of 
Nature  by  thrusting  Cleon  into  the  place  of  Pericles. 
But  a  democracy  that  could  fight  for  an  abstraction, 
whose  members  held  life  and  goods  cheap  compared  with 
that  larger  life  which  we  call  country,  was  not  merely 
.unheard-of,  but  portentous.  It  was  the  nightmare  of  the 
Old  World  taking  upon  itself  flesh  and  blood,  turning 
out  to  be  substance  and  not  dream.  Since  the  Norman 
crusader  clanged  down  upon  the  throne  of  the  porphyro- 
geniti,  carefully  draped  appearances  had  never  received 
such  a  shock,  had  never  been  so  rudely  called  on  to  pro- 
duce their  titles  to  the  empire  of  the  world.  Authority 
has  had  its  periods  not  unlike  those  of  geology,  and  at 
last  comes  man  claiming  kingship  in  right  of  his  mere 
manhood.  The  world  of  the  Saurians  might  be  in  some 
respects  more  picturesque,  but  the  march  of  events  is 
inexorable,  and  that  world  is  bygone. 

The  young  giant  had  certainly  got  out  of  long  clothes. 
He  had  become  the  enfant  terrible  of  the  human  house- 
hold. It  was  not  and  will  not  be  easy  for  the  world  (espe- 
cially for  our  British  cousins)  to  look  upon  us  as  grown 
up.  The  youngest  of  nations,  its  people  must  also  be 
young  and  to  be  treated  accordingly,  was  the  syllogism — 
as  if  libraries  did  not  make  all  nations  equally  old  in  all 
those  respects,  at  least,  where  age  is  an  advantage  and 


CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS  351 

not  a  defect.  Youth,  no  doubt,  has  its  good  qualities, 
as  people  feel  who  are  losing  it,  but  boyishness  is  another 
thing.  We  had  been  somewhat  boyish  as  a  nation,  a  little 
loud,  a  little  pushing,  a  little  braggart.  But  might  it  not 
partly  have  been  because  we  felt  that  we  had  certain 
claims  to  respect  that  were  not  admitted?  The  war  which 
established  our  position  as  a  vigorous  nationality  has  also 
sobered  us.  A  nation,  like  a  man,  can  not  look  death  in 
the  eye  for  four  years  without  some  strange  reflections, 
without  arriving  at  some  clearer  consciousness  of  the  stuff 
it  is  made  of,  without  some  great  moral  change.  Such  a 
change,  or  the  beginning  of  it,  no  observant  person  can 
fail  to  see  here.  Our  thought  and  our  politics,  our  bear- 
ing as  a  people,  are  assuming  a  manlier  tone.  We  have 
been  compelled  to  see  what  was  weak  in  democracy  as 
well  as  what  was  strong.  We  have  begun  obscurely  to 
recognise  that  things  do  not  go  of  themselves,  and  that 
popular  government  is  not  in  itself  a  panacea,  is  no  better 
than  any  other  form  except  as  the  virtue  and  wisdom  of 
the  people  make  it  so,  and  that  when  men  undertake  to 
do  their  own  kingship  they  enter  upon  the  dangers  and 
responsibilities  as  well  as  the  privileges  of  the  function. 
Above  all,  it  looks  as  if  we  were  on  the  way  to  be  per- 
suaded that  no  government  can  be  carried  on  by  declama- 
tion. It  is  noticeable  also  that  facility  of  communication 
has  made  the  best  English  and  French  thought  far  more 
directly  operative  here  than  ever  before.  Without  being 
Europeanized,  our  discussion  of  important  questions  in 
statesmanship,  in  political  economy,  in  aesthetics,  is  tak- 
ing a  broader  scope  and  a  higher  tone.  It  had  certainly 
been  provincial,  one  might  almost  say  local,  to  a  very 
unpleasant  extent.  Perhaps  our  experience  in  soldiership 
has  taught  us  to  value  training  more  than  we  have  been 
popularly  wont.  We  may  possibly  come  to  the  conclusion 
one  of  these  days  that  self-made  men  may  not  be  always 
equally  skilful  in  the  manufacture  of  wisdom,  may  not  be 
divinely  commissioned  to  fabricate  the  higher  qualities 
of  opinion  on  all  possible  topics  of  human  interest. 

So  long  as  we  continue  to  be  the  most  common- 
schooled  and  the  least  cultivated  people  in  the  world  I 
suppose  we  must  consent  to  endure  this  condescending 


LOWELL 

manner  of  foreigners  toward  us.  The  more  friendly  they 
mean  to  be  the  more  ludicrously  prominent  it  becomes. 
They  can  never  appreciate  the  immense  amount  of  silent 
work  that  has  been  done  here,  making  this  continent 
slowly  fit  for  the  abode  of  man,  and  which  will  demon- 
strate itself,  let  us  hope,  in  the  character  of  the  people. 
Outsiders  can  only  be  expected  to  judge  a  nation  by  the 
amount  it  has  contributed  to  the  civilization  of  the  world; 
the  amount,  that  is,  that  can  be  seen  and  handled.  A 
great  place  in  history  can  only  be  achieved  by  competi- 
tive examinations — nay,  by  a  long  course  of  them.  How 
much  new  thought  have  we  contributed  to  the  common 
stock?  Till  that  question  can  be  triumphantly  answered, 
or  needs  no  answer,  we  must  continue  to  be  simply  inter- 
esting as  an  experiment,  to  be  studied  as  a  problem,  and 
not  respected  as  an  attained  result  or  an  accomplished 
solution.  Perhaps,  as  I  have  hinted,  their  patronizing 
manner  toward  us  is  the  fair  result  of  their  failing  to  see 
here  anything  more  than  a  poor  imitation,  a  plaster  cast 
of  Europe.  And  are  they  not  partly  right?  If  the  tone 
of  the  uncultivated  American  has  too  often  the  arrogance 
of  the  barbarian,  is  not  that  of  the  cultivated  as  often 
vulgarly  apologetic?  In  the  America  they  meet  with  is 
there  the  simplicity,  the  manliness,  the  absence  of  sham, 
the  sincere  human  nature,  the  sensitiveness  to  duty  and 
implied  obligation,  that  in  any  way  distinguishes  us  from 
what  our  orators  call  "  the  effete  civilization  of  the  Old 
World  "?  Is  there  a  politician  among  us  daring  enough 
(except  a  Dana  here  and  there)  to  risk  his  future  on  the 
chance  of  our  keeping  our  word  with  the  exactness  of 
superstitious  communities  like  England?  Is  it  certain 
that  we  shall  be  ashamed  of  a  bankruptcy  of  honour  if  we 
can  only  keep  the  letter  of  our  bond?  I  hope  we  shall  be 
able  to  answer  all  these  questions  with  a  frank  Yes.  At 
any  rate,  we  would  advise  our  visitors  that  we  are  not 
merely  curious  creatures,  but  belong  to  the  family  of  man, 
and  that  as  individuals  we  are  not  to  be  always  subjected 
to  the  competitive  examination  above  mentioned,  even 
if  we  acknowledged  their  competence  as  an  examining 
board.  Above  all,  we  beg  them  to  remember  that  Amer- 
ica is  not  to  us,  as  to  them,  a  mere  object  of  external  in- 


CONDESCENSION    IN   FOREIGNERS  353 

terest  to  be  discussed  and  analyzed,  but  in  us,  part  of  our 
very  marrow.  Let  them  not  suppose  that  we  conceive  of 
ourselves  as  exiles  from  the  graces  and  amenities  of  an 
older  date  than  we,  though  very  much  at  home  in  a  state 
of  things  not  yet  all  it  might  be  or  should  be,  but  which 
we  mean  to  make  so,  and  which  we  find  both  wholesome 
and  pleasant  for  men  (though  perhaps  not  for  dilettanti) 
to  live  in.  "  The  full  tide  of  human  existence  "  may  be 
felt  here  as  keenly  as  Johnson  felt  it  at  Charing  Cross,  and 
in  a  larger  sense.  I  know  one  person  who  is  singular 
enough  to  think  Cambridge  the  very  best  spot  on  the 
habitable  globe.  "  Doubtless  God  could  have  made  a 
better,  but  doubtless  he  never  did." 

It  will  take  England  a  great  while  to  get  over  her  airs 
of  patronage  toward  us,  or  even  passably  to  conceal  them. 
She  can  not  help  confounding  the  people  with  the  coun- 
try, and  regarding  us  as  lusty  juveniles.  She  has  a  con- 
viction that  whatever  good  there  is  in  us  is  wholly  Eng- 
lish, when  the  truth  is  that  we  are  worth  nothing  except 
so  far  as  we  have  disinfected  ourselves  of  Anglicism.  She 
is  especially  condescending  just  now,  and  lavishes  sugar 
plums  on  us  as  if  we  had  not  outgrown  them.  I  am  no 
believer  in  sudden  conversions,  especially  in  sudden  con- 
versions to  a  favourable  opinion  of  people  who  have  just 
proved  you  to  be  mistaken  in  judgment,  and  therefore 
unwise  in  policy.  I  never  blamed  her  for  not  wishing 
well  to  democracy — how  should  she? — but  Alabamas  are 
not  wishes.  Let  her  not  be  too  hasty  in  believing  Mr. 
Reverdy  Johnson's  pleasant  words.  Though  there  is  no 
thoughtful  man  in  America  who  would  not  consider  a  war 
with  England  the  greatest  of  calamities,  yet  the  feeling 
toward  her  here  is  very  far  from  cordial,  whatever  our 
minister  may  say  in  the  effusion  that  comes  after  ample 
dining.  Mr.  Adams,  with  his  famous  "  My  lord,  this 
means  war,"  perfectly  represented  his  country.  Justly 
or  not,  we  have  a  feeling  that  we  have  been  wronged,  not 
merely  insulted.  The  only  sure  way  of  bringing  about 
a  healthy  relation  between  the  two  countries  is  for  Eng- 
lishmen to  clear  their  minds  of  the  notion  that  we  are 
always  to  be  treated  as  a  kind  of  inferior  and  deported 
Englishman  whose  nature  they  perfectly  understand,  and 


LOWELL 

whose  back  they  accordingly  stroke  the  wrong  way  of  the 
fur  with  amazing  perseverance.  Let  them  learn  to  treat 
us  naturally  on  our  merits  as  human  beings,  as  they  would 
a  German  or  a  Frenchman,  and  not  as  if  we  were  a  kind 
of  counterfeit  Briton  whose  crime  appeared  in  every  shade 
of  difference,  and  before  long  there  would  come  that  right 
feeling  which  we  naturally  call  a  good  understanding.  The 
common  blood,  and  still  more  the  common  language,  are 
fatal  instruments  of  misapprehension.  Let  them  give  up 
trying  to  understand  us,  still  more  thinking  that  they  do, 
and  acting  in  various  absurd  ways  as  the  necessary  conse- 
quence, for  they  will  never  arrive  at  that  devoutly-to-be- 
wished  consummation  till  they  learn  to  look  at  us  as  we 
are  and  not  as  they  suppose  us  to  be.  Dear  old  long- 
estranged  mother-in-law,  it  is  a  great  many  years  since  we 
parted.  Since  1660,  when  you  married  again,  you  have 
been  a  stepmother  to  us.  Put  on  your  spectacles,  dear 
madam.  Yes,  we  have  grown,  and  changed  likewise.  You 
would  not  let  us  darken  your  doors  if  you  could  help 
it.  We  know  that  perfectly  well.  But  pray,  when  we 
look  to  be  treated  as  men,  don't  shake  that  rattle  in  our 
faces,  nor  talk  baby  to  us  any  longer. 

"  Dp,  child,  go  to  it  grandam,  child; 
Give  grandam  kingdom,  and  it  grandam  will 
Give  it  a  plum,  a  cherry,  and  a  fig!  " 

NOTE 

1  One  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  neatest  strokes  of  humour  was  his  treatment 
of  this  gentleman  when  a  laudable  curiosity  induced  him  to  be  presented 
to  the  President  of  the  Broken  Bubble.  Mr.  Lincoln  persisted  in  call- 
ing him  Mr.  Partington.  Surely  the  refinement  of  good  breeding 
could  go  no  further.  Giving  the  young  man  his  real  name  (already 
notorious  in  the  newspapers)  would  have  made  his  visit  an  insult.  Had 
Henry  IV  done  this,  it  would  have  been  famous. 


INTELLECTUAL  HEALTH 
AND  DISEASE 

BY 

EDWIN   PERCY   WHIPPLE 


EDWIN  PERCY  WHIPPLE,  critic  and  essayist,  was  born  in  Gloucester, 
Mass.,  March  8,  1819.  He  began  to  write  for  newspapers  at  the  age  of 
fourteen,  became  a  bank  clerk,  and  a  few  years  later  was  on  the  lecture 
platform.  His  lectures  had  a  wide  range  of  subjects,  and  he  is  said  to 
have  addressed  more  than  a  thousand  audiences.  He  was  one  of  the 
most  pleasing  of  essayists  and  one  of  the  sanest  of  critics,  constantly  at 
work,  and  very  fastidious  even  in  the  preparation  of  an  ephemeral  article. 
Though  he  was  self-educated,  he  could  hardly  have  been  more  learned 
had  he  gone  through  academies  and  universities.  He  died  in  Boston, 
Tune  16,  1886.  His  collected  works  are  published  in  a  uniform  edition, 
in  nine  volumes.  The  essay  that  follows  was  originally  written  for  de- 
livery before  the  literary  societies  of  Dartmouth  College,  and  it  is  repro- 
duced here  by  the  courtesy  of  his  publishers,  Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin 
&  Co.,  whose  copyright  protects  it. 


INTELLECTUAL   HEALTH   AND   DISEASE 

A  PROMINENT  characteristic  of  the  present  day, 
and  in  many  respects  an  admirable  one,  is  the 
universal  attention  given  to  the  subject  of  bodily 
health;  but,  like  many  other  movements  founded  on  half 
truths,  it  has  been  pushed  by  fanaticism  into  ludicrous 
perversions.  Physiology  has  been  systematized  into  a 
kind  of  popular  gospel,  in  whose  doctrines  the  soul  seems 
of  little  importance  in  comparison  with  the  gastric  juice. 
Physic  having  become  a  fashion,  a  valetudinary  air  is  now 
the  sign  of  your  true  coxcomb;  and  every  idle  person  has 
his  pet  complaint,  which  he  nurses  in  some  genteel  in- 
firmary. There  is  a  universal  cant  about  health;  every 
city  and  hamlet  is  beleaguered  by  the  hosts  of  Hippocra- 
tes, the  floods  of  hydropathy,  and  the  animalculae  of  homoe- 
opathy; and  no  person  can  venture  into  the  street  with- 
out being  assaulted  by  some  hygeian  highwayman,  who 
presents  a  vial  to  his  head,  and  demands  his  patience  or 
his  purse.  Now  the  practical  consequence  of  this  deifica- 
tion of  the  body  and  worship  of  dietetics  is  to  bring  men 
under  the  dominion  of  a  sickly  selfishness  and  a  craven 
cowardice,  while  pretending  to  teach  them  the  physical 
laws  of  their  being.  Man  obeys  the  highest  law  of  his 
being  when  he  takes  his  life  in  his  hand  and  boldly  ven- 
tures it  for  something  he  values  more  than  self.  Life  cast 
away  for  truth  or  duty,  even  for  fame  or  knowledge,  is 
better  than  life  saved  for  the  sake  of  living.  But  your 
true  disciple  of  physiological  religion,  with  his  morbid 
consciousness  of  that  collection  of  veins,  bones,  muscles, 
and  appetites,  which  he  calls  himself,  would  consider  it  a 
monstrous  violation  of  the  physical  laws  of  his  being  to 
obey  a  benevolent  impulse  which  endangered  a  blood- 
vessel, or  to  purchase  the  discovery  of  a  new  truth  at  the 

«3  357 


WHIPPLE 

expense  of  deranged  digestion:  and  he  would  survey  with 
lazy  wonder  the  strange  ignorance  of  Howard  penetrating 
into  pestilential  prisons;  of  Washington  exposing  his  per- 
son to  a  storm  of  bullets;  of  Ridley  serenely  yielding  his 
frame  to  that  baptism  of  fire  which  enrolled  him  forever 
in  the  glorious  army  of  martyrs.  Such  acts  as  these  were 
doubtless  violations  of  physical  laws,  and  prove  that  heroes 
are  not  framed  on  accurate  physiological  principles. 

Indeed,  health  and  disease,  in  their  highest  meaning, 
refer  more  to  the  mind  than  to  the  body.  A  code  of  ethics 
built  on  physical  laws  can  but  inculcate  a  selfish  super- 
ficial prudence;  and  prudence,  except  in  weaklings,  will 
not  restrain  self-indulgence,  and  ought  not  to  restrain  self- 
sacrifice.  There  are  no  duties,  therefore,  which  are  not 
resolvable  into  moral  duties;  no  vices  which  have  not 
their  scorpion  nest  in  the  heart.  'Do  you  suppose  that  any 
knowing  prattle  about  the  breathing  or  digesting  appara- 
tus will  still  the  hoarse  clamour  of  gluttony  and  sensual- 
ity? Will  it  relax  the  grasp  of  Satanic  pride?  In  truth, 
you  will  find  that  prudence  without  conscience  holds  but 
a  rein  of  flax  on  the  wild  war  horses  of  passion.  But  it  is 
a  characteristic  weakness  of  the  day  to  superficialize  evil; 
to  spread  a  little  cold  cream  over  Pandemonium,  erect  a 
nice  little  earthly  paradise  upon  it,  and  then  to  rush  into 
misanthropy  because  the  thin  structure  instantly  melts. 
Indeed,  it  is  at  the  very  core  of  the  mind  that  we  must 
search  for  the  principles  of  health  and  disease — in  the  mys- 
teries of  will,  intelligence,  sentiment,  and  passion,  rather 
than  in  the  organs  which  are  their  instruments  or  victims. 
Besides,  bodily  maladies  may  be  badges  of  disgrace  or 
titles  of  honour;  your  drunkard  and  your  philosopher  may 
both  take  their  "  leap  into  the  dark  "  from  apoplexy;  and 
there  is  a  great  difference  between  Milton,  sacrificing  his 
eyesight  from  the  love  of  liberty,  and  Byron,  sacrificing 
his  digestion  from  the  love  of  gin. 

The  subject,  therefore,  to  which  I  would  call  your 
attention  is  intellectual  health  and  disease  as  it  exists  in 
individuals  and  in  nations.  To  one  who  reflects  on  the 
nature  and  capacity  of  the  human  mind,  there  is  some- 
thing inconceivably  awful  in  its  perversions.  Look  at  it 
as  it  comes,  fresh  and  plastic,  from  its  Maker;  look  at  it 


INTELLECTUAL   HEALTH   AND   DISEASE  359 

as  it  returns,  stained  and  hardened,  to  its  Maker.  Con- 
ceive of  a  mind,  a  living  soul,  with  the  germs  of  faculties 
which  infinity  can  not  exhaust,  as  it  first  beams  upon  you 
in  its  glad  morning  of  existence;  quivering  with  life  and 
joy;  exulting  in  the  bounding  sense  of  its  developing  en- 
ergies; beautiful,  and  brave,  and  generous,  and  joyous, 
and  free — the  clear,  pure  spirit  bathed  in  the  auroral  light 
of  its  unconscious  immortality:  and  then  follow  it,  in  its 
dark  passage  through  life,  as  it  stifles  and  kills,  one  by 
one,  every  inspiration  and  aspiration  of  its  being,  until  it 
becomes  but  a  dead  soul  entombed  in  a  living  frame.  It 
may  be  that  a  selfish  frivolity  has  sunk  it  into  contented 
worldliness,  or  given  it  the  vapid  air  of  complacent  imbe- 
cility. It  may  be  that  it  is  marred  and  disfigured  by  the 
hoof-prints  of  appetite,  its  humanity  extinguished  in  the 
mad  tyranny  of  animal  ferocities.  It  may  be  that  pride 
has  stamped  the  scowl  of  hatred  upon  its  front;  that 
avarice  and  revenge,  set  on  fire  of  hell,  have  blasted  and 
blackened  its  unselfish  affections.  The  warm  sensibility 
gushing  spontaneously  out  in  world-wide  sympathies — 
the  bright  and  strong  intellect,  eager  for  action  and  thirst- 
ing for  truth — the  rapturous  devotion,  mounting  upward 
in  a  pillar  of  flame  to  God — all  gone,  and  only  remembered 
as  childish  enthusiasm,  to  point  the  sneer  of  the  shrewd 
and  the  scoff  of  the  brutal!  Where,  in  this  hard  mass  of 
animated  clay,  wrinkled  by  cunning  or  brutalized  by  self- 
ishness, are  the  power  and  joy  prophesied  in  the  aspira- 
tions of  youth? 

"Whither  hath  fled  the  visionary  gleam? 
Where  is  it  now,  the  glory  and  the  dream?  " 

To  give  the  philosophy  of  this  mental  disease,  to  sub- 
ject the  mind  to  that  scrutiny  which  shall  account  for  its 
perversions,  we  must  pass  behind  its  ordinary  operations 
of  understanding,  sensibility,  and  imagination,  and  attempt 
to  clutch  its  inmost  spirit  and  essence.  Now  an  analysis 
of  our  consciousness,  or  rather  a  contemplation  of  the 
mysterious  processes  of  our  inward  life,  reveals  no  facul- 
ties and  no  impulses  which  can  be  disconnected  from  our 
personality.  The  mind  is  no  collection  of  self-acting  pow- 
ers and  passions,  but  a  vital,  indissoluble  unit  and  person, 


WHIPPLE 

capable,  it  is  true,  of  great  variety  of  manifestation,  but 
still  in  its  nature  a  unit,  not  an  aggregate.  For  the  pur- 
poses of  science,  or  verbal  convenience,  we  may  call  its 
various  operations  by  different  names,  according  as  it  per- 
ceives, feels,  understands,  or  imagines;  but  the  moment 
science  breaks  it  up  into  a  series  of  disconnected  parts, 
and  considers  each  part  by  itself  as  a  separate  power,  that 
moment  the  living  principle  of  mind  is  lost,  and  the  result 
is  an  anarchy  of  faculties.  Fortunately,  however,  we  can 
not  free  ourselves,  by  any  craft  of  analysis,  from  personal 
pronouns.  A  man  who  speaks  or  acts  instinctively  men- 
tions it  as — I  said,  I  did.  We  do  not  say  that  Milton's 
imagination  wrote  "  Paradise  Lost,"  but  that  Milton  wrote 
it.  There  is  no  mental  operation  in  which  the  whole  mind 
is  not  present;  nothing  produced  but  by  the  joint  action 
of  all  its  faculties,  under  the  direction  of  its  central  per- 
sonality. This  central  principle  of  mind  is  spiritual  force 
—capacity  to  cause,  to  create,  to  assimilate,  to  be.  This 
underlies  all  faculties;  interpenetrates,  fuses,  directs  all 
faculties.  This  thinks,  this  feels,  this  imagines,  this  wor- 
ships; this  is  what  glows  with  health,  this  is  what  is  en- 
feebled and  corrupted  by  disease.  Call  it  what  you  please 
— will,  personality,  individuality,  character,  force  of  being 
— but  recognise  it  as  the  true  spiritual  power  which  con- 
stitutes a  living  soul.  This  is  the  only  peculiarity  which 
separates  the  impersonal  existence  of  a  vegetable  from  the 
personal  life  of  a  man.  The  material  universe  is  instinct 
with  spiritual  existence,  but  only  in  man  is  it  individual- 
ized into  spiritual  life. 

Now  there  is  no  such  thing  as  faculty  which  has  not 
its  root  in  this  personal  force.  Without  this,  thought  is 
but  insanity,  and  action,  fate.  Men  do  not  stumble,  and 
blunder,  and  happen  into  "  Iliads,"  and  "  yEneids,"  and 
"  Divina  Commedias,"  and  "  Othellos/'  in  a  drunken  dream 
of  poetic  inspiration,  but  work  and  grow  up  to  them.  It 
is  common,  I  know,  to  point  to  some  lazy  gentleman  and 
say  that  there  is  a  protuberance  on  his  forehead  or  temple 
sufficiently  large  to  produce  a  "  Hamlet  "  or  a  "  Principia  " 
if  he  only  had  an  active  temperament.  But  the  thing  which 
produces  "  Hamlets"  and  "  Principias"  is  not  physical  tem- 
perament, but  spiritual  power.  What  a  man  does  is  the  real 


INTELLECTUAL   HEALTH   AND   DISEASE  361 

test  of  what  a  man  is;  and  to  declare  that  he  has  great 
capacity  but  nothing  great  to  set  his  capacity  in  motion 
is  an  absurdity  in  terms. 

This  mind,  this  free  spiritual  force,  can  not  grow,  can 
not  even  exist,  by  itself.  It  can  only  grow  by  assimilating 
something  external  to  itself,  the  very  condition  of  mental 
life  being  the  exercise  of  power  within  on  objects  without. 
The  form  and  superficial  qualities  of  objects  it  perceives; 
their  life  and  spirit  it  conceives.  Only  what  the  mind  con- 
ceives it  assimilates  and  draws  into  its  own  life — intellec- 
tual conception  indicating  a  penetrating  vision  into  the 
heart  of  things  through  a  fierce,  firm  exertion  of  vital 
creative  force.  In  this  distinction  between  perception  and 
conception  we  have  a  principle  which  accounts  for  the  lim- 
ited degree  in  which  so  many  persons  grow  in  intelligence 
and  character,  in  grace  and  gracelessness.  Here,  also,  is 
the  distinction  between  assent  and  faith,  theory  and  prac- 
tice. In  the  one  case,  opinions  lie  on  the  surface  of  the 
mind,  mere  objects,  the  truth  of  which  it  perceives,  but 
which  do  not  influence  its  will;  in  the  other,  ideas  pene- 
trate into  the  very  substance  of  the  mind,  become  one 
with  it,  and  are  springs  of  living  thought  and  action.  For 
instance,  you  may  cram  whole  folios  of  morality  and  divin- 
ity into  the  heads  of  Dick  Turpin  and  Captain  Kidd,  and 
both  will  cordially  assent  to  their  truth;  but  the  captives 
of  Dick's  blunderbuss  will  still  have  to  give  up  their 
purses,  and  the  prisoners  of  Kidd's  piracy  will  still  have 
to  walk  the  plank.  On  the  other  hand,  you  may  pour 
all  varieties  of  immoral  opinions  and  images  into  the  un- 
derstanding of  a  pure  and  high  nature,  and  there  they  will 
remain,  unassimilated,  uncorrupting;  his  mind,  like  that 
of  Ion, 

"  Though  shapes  of  ill 

May  hover  round  its  surface,  glides  in  light, 

'And  takes  no  shadow  from  them." 

In  accordance  with  the  same  principle  all  knowledge, 
however  imposing  in  its  appearance,  is  but  superficial 
knowledge  if  it  be  merely  the  mind's  furniture,  not  the 
mind's  nutriment.  It  must  be  transmitted  into  mind,  as 
food  is  into  blood,  to  become  wisdom  and  power.  There 
is  many  a  human  parrot  and  memory  monger  who  has 


WHIPPLE 

read  and  who  recollects  more  history  than  Webster;  but 
in  Webster  history  has  become  judgment,  foresight,  ex- 
ecutive force,  mind.  That  seemingly  instinctive  sagacity 
by  which  an  able  man  does  exactly  the  right  thing  at  the 
right  moment  is  nothing  but  a  collection  of  facts  thus 
assimilated  into  thought.  This  power  of  instantaneous 
action  without  reflection  is  the  only  thing  which  saves 
men  in  great  emergencies;  but  far  from  being  independ- 
ent of  knowledge  and  experience,  it  is  their  noblest  result. 
Many  of  the  generals  opposed  to  Napoleon  understood 
military  science  as  well  as  he  did;  but  he  beat  them  on 
every  occasion  where  victory  depended  on  a  wise  move- 
ment made  at  a  moment's  thought,  because  science  had 
been  transfused  into  his  mind,  while  it  was  only  attached 
to  theirs.  Every  truly  practical  man,  whether  he  be  mer- 
chant, mechanic,  or  agriculturist,  thus  transmutes  his 
experience  into  intelligence  until  his  will  operates  with 
the  celerity  of  instinct.  In  the  order  of  intellectual  de- 
velopment intuition  does  not  precede  observation  and 
reflection,  but  is  their  last  perfection.  First,  slow  steps, 
cautious  examination,  comparison,  reasoning  ;  then 
thought  and  action,  swift,  sharp,  and  sure  as  the  light- 
ning. 

If  the  mind  thus  grows  by  assimilating  external  ob- 
jects, it  is  plain  that  the  character  of  the  objects  it  assimi- 
lates will  determine  the  form  of  its  development,  and  its 
health  or  disease.  Mental  health  consists  in  the  self-direc- 
tion of  mental  power,  in  the  capacity  to  perceive  its  own 
relations  to  objects  and  the  relations  of  objects  to  each 
other,  and  to  choose  those  which  will  conduce  to  its  en- 
largement and  elevation.  Disease  occurs  both  when  it 
loses  its  self-direction  and  its  self-distrust.  When  it  loses 
its  self-direction  it  surrenders  itself  to  every  outward  im- 
pression; when  it  loses  its  self-distrust,  it  surrenders  itself 
to  every  inward  whim.  In  the  one  case  it  loses  all  moral 
and  intellectual  character,  becomes  unstrung,  sentimenta^ 
dissolute,  with  feebleness  at  the  very  heart  of  its  being; 
in  the  other,  it  perversely  misconceives  and  discolours 
external  things,  views  every  object  as  a  mirror  of  self, 
and,  having  no  reverence  for  aught  above  itself,  subsides 
into  a  poisonous  mass  of  egotism,  conceit,  and  falsehood. 


INTELLECTUAL   HEALTH   AND   DISEASE  363 

Thus  disease  occurs  both  when  the  mind  loses  itself  in 
objects  and  when  objects  are  lost  in  it — when  it  parts  with 
will  and  when  it  becomes  wilful.  The  last  consequence  of 
will  submerged  is  sensuality,  brutality,  slavishness;  the 
last  consequence  of  will  perverted  is  Satanic  pride.  Now 
it  is  an  almost  universal  law  that  the  diseased  weak,  the 
men  of  unrestrained  appetites,  shall  become  the  victims 
and  slaves  of  the  diseased  strong,  the  men  of  unrestrained 
wills,  and  that  the  result  of  this  relation  shall  be  misery, 
decay,  and  death  to  both.  Here  is  the  principle  of  all 
slavery,  political,  intellectual,  and  religious,  in  individuals 
and  in  communities. 

Thus  if  the  primitive  principle  of  mind  be  simply  the 
capacity  to  assimilate  external  objects,  and  if  objects  in 
this  process  become  mind  and  character,  it  is  obvious  that 
self-direction — the  power  to  choose,  to  resist,  to  act  in 
reference  to  law,  and  not  from  the  impulse  of  desire — is 
the  condition  of  health  and  enduring  strength.  Let  us 
now  consider  how  these  objects — which  may  be  included 
under  the  general  terms  of  nature  and  other  minds — influ- 
ence for  evil  or  good  the  individual  soul,  according  as 
their  impulse  is  blindly  followed,  wilfully  perverted,  or 
genially  assimilated. 

The  objects  which  have  the  most  power  over  the  mind 
are  probably  those  in  visible  nature  which  refer  to  appetite 
and  passion.  These  are  continually  striving  to  draw  the 
mind  into  themselves,  to  weaken  the  force  at  its  centre 
and  soul,  to  reduce  it  into  mere  perception  and  sensation, 
and  to  destroy  its  individual  life.  The  emotion  which 
accompanies  this  yielding  of  the  mind  to  death  has,  with 
a  bitterness  of  irony  never  excelled  by  man  or  demon, 
been  called  pleasure.  Now  it  is  a  mistake  which  is  apt  to 
vitiate  theology,  to  confound  will  with  wilfulness,  and  to 
make  destruction  of  will  the  condition  of  rising  to  God. 
But  will  weakened  or  will  destroyed  ever  goes  downward. 
It  delivers  itself  to  sensuality — or  to  fanaticism,  which  is 
the  sensuality  of  the  religious  sentiment — not  to  spiritual- 
ity, not  to  Deity.  A  being  placed  like  man  among  strong 
and  captivating  visible  objects  becomes,  the  moment  he 
loses  self-direction,  a  slave,  in  the  most  terribly  compre- 
hensive meaning  of  that  all-annihilating  word;  and  I  be- 


364  WHIPPLE 

lieve  the  doctrine  runs  not  that  we  are  slaves,  but  children 

of  God. 

Will  is  also  often  confounded  with  wilfulness  in  the 
metaphysics  of  that  aesthetic  criticism  which  deals  with 
the  grandest  creations  of  genius.  The  highest  mood  of 
the  mind  is  declared  to  be  that  where  it  loses  its  individ- 
uality in  the  objects  it  contemplates;  where  it  becomes 
objective  and  healthy,  in  distinction  from  subjective  or 
morbid.  This  objectiveness  is  confounded  with  self-aban- 
donment, and  thus  causative  force  is  absurdly  denied  while 
treating  of  the  soul's  creative  acts.  But  it  is  not  by  self- 
abandonment  that  the  far-darting,  all-assimilating  intellect 
of  genius  identifies  itself  for  the  moment  with  its  concep- 
tions; it  is  rather  by  the  sublimest  exercise  of  will  and 
central  force.  Let  us  take,  in  illustration,  three  poets  in 
an  ascending  scale  of  intellectual  precedence — Keats,  the 
representative  of  sensitiveness  ;  Byron,  of  wilfulness; 
Shakespeare,  of  self-direction.  Now  in  Keats — a  mind  of 
immense  spontaneous  fruitfulness — a  certain  class  of  ob- 
jects take  his  intellect  captive,  melt  and  merge  his  indi- 
vidual being  in  themselves,  are  stronger  than  he,  and  hold 
him  in  a  state  of  soft  diffusion  in  their  own  nature.  The 
impression  left  on  the  imagination  is  of  sensuous  beauty, 
but  spiritual  weakness.  Then  Byron,  arrogant,  domineer- 
ing, egotistic,  diseased — viewing  Nature  and  man  alto- 
gether in  relation  to  himself,  and  spurning  the  objective 
laws  of  things — forces  objects,  with  autocratic  insolence, 
into  the  shape  of  his  own  morbid  nature,  stamps  them 
with  his  mark,  and  leaves  the  impression  of  intense,  nar- 
row, wilful  energy.  But  Shakespeare,  the  strongest  of 
creative  intellects,  and  comprehensive  because  he  was 
strong,  passes,  by  the  gigantic  force  of  his  will,  into  the 
heart  of  other  natures;  is  sensuous,  impassioned,  witty, 
beautiful,  sublime,  and  terrible  at  pleasure;  rises  by  the 
same  force  with  which  he  stoops;  in  his  most  prodigious 
exertions  of  energy  ever  observes  laws  instead  of  obeying 
caprice;  comprehends  all  his  creations  without  being  com- 
prehended by  them;  and  comes  out  at  the  end,  not  Fal- 
staff,  or  Faulconbridge,  or  Hamlet,  or  Timon,  or  Lear,  or 
Perdita,  but  Shakespeare,  the  beneficent  and  august  intel- 
lect which  includes  them  all.  The  difference  between  him 


INTELLECTUAL   HEALTH   AND   DISEASE  365 

and  other  poets  is  that,  in  virtue  of  passing  into  another 
life  by  force  of  will,  not  by  being  drawn  in  by  force  of  the 
object,  he  could  escape  from  it  with  ease,  and  proceed  to 
animate  other  existences,  thus  keeping  his  mind  con- 
stantly assimilating  and  working  with  Nature.  Keats  was 
drawn  into  his  particular  class  of  objects,  and  could  not 
get  out.  Byron  drew  objects  into  himself,  and  then  poi- 
soned them  by  capriciously  distorting  and  discolouring 
their  essential  character.  Keats  would  have  stayed  with 
Perdita;  Byron,  with  Timon. 

Let  us  next  consider,  in  further  illustration  of  our 
theme,  those  potent  forces  which  come,  through  history, 
through  literature,  and  through  social  communion,  from 
other  minds,  and  from  whose  action  a  continual  stream 
of  influences  is  pouring  in  upon  the  individual  soul. 
Those  which  proceed  from  society,  to  benefit  or  corrupt, 
are  so  obvious  that  it  is  needless  to  emphasize  their  power. 
Look  around  any  community,  and  you  find  it  dotted  over 
with  men,  marked  and  ticketed  as  not  belonging  to  them- 
selves, but  to  some  other  man,  from  whom  they  take  their 
literature,  their  politics,  their  religion.  They  are  willing 
captives  of  a  stronger  nature;  feed  on  his  life  as  though 
it  were  miraculous  manna  rained  from  heaven;  compla- 
cently parade  his  name  as  an  adjective  to  point  out  their 
own;  and  give  wonderful  pertinence  to  that  nursery 
rhyme,  whose  esoteric  depth  irradiates  even  its  exoteric 
expression: 

"  Whose  dog  are  you? 
I  am  Billy  Patton's  dog; 

Whose  dog  are  you?  " 

This  social  servility,  as  seen  in  its  annual  harvest  of 
dwindled  souls,  abject  in  everything,  from  the  tie  of  a 
neckcloth  to  the  points  of  a  creed,  is  a  sufficiently  strong 
indication  of  the  tyranny  which  a  few  forcible  persons  can 
establish  in  any  of  our  "  free  and  enlightened  "  communi- 
ties; but  perhaps  a  more  subtle  influence  than  that  which 
proceeds  from  social  relations  comes  from  that  abstract 
and  epitome  of  the  whole  mind  of  the  whole  world  which 
we  find  in  history  and  literature.  Here  the  thought  and 
action  of  the  race  are  brought  home  to  the  individual 
intelligence;  and  the  danger  is,  that  we  make  what  should 
24 


366 


WHIPPLE 


be  our  emancipation  an  instrument  of  servitude,  fall  a 
victim  to  one  author  or  one  age,  and  lose  the  power  of 
learning  from  many  minds,  by  sinking  into  the  contented 
vassal  of  one;  and  end,  at  last,  in  an  intellectual  resem- 
blance to  that  gentleman  who  only  knew  two  tunes,  "  one 
of  which,"  he  said,  "  was  '  Old  Hundred/  and  the  other— 
wasn't."  The  danger  to  individuality  in  reading  is  not 
that  we  repeat  an  author's  opinions  or  expressions,  but 
that  we  be  magnetized  by  his  spirit  to  the  extent  of  being 
drawn  into  his  stronger  life,  and  losing  our  particular 
being.  Now  no  man  is  benefited  by  being  conquered; 
and  the  most  modest  might  say  to  the  mightiest — to 
Homer,  to  Dante,  to  Milton,  to  Goethe — "  Keep  off,  gen- 
tlemen— not  so  near,  if  you  please;  you  can  do  me  vast 
service  provided  you  do  not  swallow  me  up;  my  personal 
being  is  small,  but  allow  me  to  say  of  it,  as  Touchstone 
said  of  Audrey,  his  wife,  '  A  poor  thing,  sir,  but  mine 
own.1 ' 

Indeed,  we  can  never  fully  realize  and  reverence  a  great 
nature,  never  grow  through  a  reception  of  his  spirit,  un- 
less we  keep  our  individuality  distinct  from  his.  In  the 
case  of  a  large  and  diseased  mind,  the  caution  becomes 
more  important.  The  most  popular  poet  of  the  present 
century  is  so  in  consequence  of  the  weakness  of  his  read- 
ers, who  are  not  so  much  his  pupils  as  his  slaves.  Byron, 
in  virtue  of  his  superior  force,  breaks  into  their  natures, 
so  to  speak — passes  into  the  very  core  of  their  moral  and 
intellectual  being — makes  them  live,  in  thought,  his  life — 
Byronizes  them;  and  the  result  of  the  conquest  is  a  horde 
of  minor  Byrons,  with  their  thin  dilutions  of  misanthropy 
and  licentiousness,  not  half  so  good  as  the  original  Peter 
and  John  they  have  delivered  up.  "  It  was  nae  great 
head  in  itsel',"  said  the  old  Scotchwoman  as  that  of  Duke 
Hamilton  rolled  from  the  block,  "  but  it  was  a  sair  loss  to 
him."  In  view  of  the  enfeebling  and  corrupting  influence 
exercised  by  a  morbid  nature,  one  is  reminded  of  the  anec- 
dote told  of  Whitefield,  the  preacher.  A  drunkard  once 
reeled  up  to  him  with  the  remark,  "  Mr.  Whitefield,  I  am 
one  of  your  converts."  "  I  think  it  very  likely,"  was  the 
reply,  "  for  I  am  sure  you  are  none  of  God's." 

The  truth  probably  is  that  the  fallacies  on  this  subject 


INTELLECTUAL   HEALTH   AND   DISEASE  367 

of  will  and  personality,  in  matters  pertaining  both  to  intel- 
lect and  morals,  have  their  source  in  man's  hatred  to 
work,  to  the  independent  exercise  of  power;  accordingly, 
he  tries,  cunningly  enough,  to  ignore  the  fact  that  work 
is  the  law  by  which  the  mind  grows,  and  affects  reverie, 
the  opium  eating  of  the  intellect,  and  calls  it  thinking. 
Theology  and  philosophy  are  both  apt  to  be  pervaded  by 
a  kind  of  pantheism,  in  which  the  perfection  of  our  nature 
is  represented  to  consist  in  merging  the  soul  in  universal 
being,  and  its  heaven  a  state  where  it  loses  itself  in  a  sea 
of  delicious  sensations.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  many 
realize  a  tolerable  heaven  of  their  kind — on  earth. 

Passing  from  the  individual  to  the  community,  let  us 
now  survey  the  two  forms  of  mental  disease,  self-worship 
and  self-abandonment,  as  expressed  in  the  history  of  states. 
A  nation  is  no  more  a  mere  collection  of  individuals  than 
an  individual  is  a  mere  collection  of  faculties.  It  has  a 
national  life,  more  or  less  peculiar  in  its  features,  and  sub- 
ject to  disease  and  decay;  and  of  this  national  life  its  form 
of  civilization  is  the  embodiment.  Now  in  the  earlier  ages 
of  the  world,  in  the  childhood  of  humanity,  the  charac- 
teristic form  of  mental  disease  is  feebleness  of  personal 
being,  and  the  consequent  absorption  of  the  individual  in 
surrounding  objects.  He  deifies  and  worships  every  form 
and  expression  of  external  power,  perceiving  a  god,  au- 
dible or  visible,  in  every  outward  force.  He  is,  of  course, 
the  natural  prey  of  craft,  ferocity,  and  tyranny,  and  his 
weakness  is  perverted  into  a  besotted  superstition,  and  a 
worship  even  of  beasts  and  inanimate  idols.  Such  were 
the  myriads  of  that  dark  Egypt  which  looms  so  gloomily 
up  above  the  clouds  of  oblivion,  the  very  image  of  disease 
and  death.  The  civilization  of  India  had  the  same  inher- 
ent weakness — the  popular  mythology,  a  medley  of  pic- 
turesque brutalities;  the  learned  philosophy,  a  dreamy 
pantheism,  wasting  and  withering  the  primitive  springs 
of  action,  its  first  principle  the  immersion  of  the  individ- 
ual soul  in  the  infinite.  India  fell  by  a  law  as  certain  as 
gravitation  before  the  ferocity  of  Mohammedan  conquest, 
and  the  Mohammedan  conquerors  as  certainly  before  the 
energy  of  England. 

The  civilization  of  the  Asiatics,  indeed,  was  a  sys- 


-58  WHIPPLE 

tematized  anarchy  of  wretchedness  and  rapine — a  mon- 
strous agglomeration,  representing  a  despot,  a  priesthood, 
and  a  huddled  mass  of  human  creatures  with  slave  written 
upon  and  burned  into  their  inmost  being.  The  vices  of 
the  tyrant  are  caprice,  self-exaggeration,  defiance  of  re- 

iint;  the  vices  of  the  slave  are  falsehood,  poltroonery, 
and  sensuality;  and  a  national  life  composed  of  such  ele- 
ments, demoniacal  vices  on  the  one  hand,  and  abject  vices 
on  the  other,  must  sink  into  imbecility,  and  totter  to  the 
tomb. 

In  passing  from  the  simple  forms  of  Asiatic  life  to  the 
complex  civilization  of  Greece,  a  more  difficult  problem 
presents  itself.  The  Greek  mind,  with  its  combination  of 
energy  and  objectiveness,  its  open  sense  to  all  the  influ- 
ences of  Nature,  its  wonderful  adaptation  to  philosophy, 
and  art,  and  arms — where,  it  may  be  asked,  can  you  de- 
tect disease  in  that?  The  answer  to  this  question  is  for- 
tunately partly  contained  in  the  statement  of  a  fact. 
Greek  civilization  is  dead;  the  Greek  mind  died  out  more 
than  two  thousand  years  ago;  a  race  of  heroes  declined 
into  a  race  of  sycophants,  sophists,  and  slaves;  and  no 
galvanic  action  of  modern  sympathy  has  ever  yet  con- 
vulsed it  into  even  a  resemblance  of  its  old  life.  Now  if 
it  died,  it  must  have  died  of  disease;  for  nothing  else  has 
power  to  kill  a  nation.  In  considering  the  causes  of  the 
decay  of  a  national  mind  so  orderly,  comprehensive,  and 
creative  as  the  Greek,  we  must  keep  steadily  prominent 
the  fact  that  it  began  in  Satanic  energy,  and  that  it  is  a 
universal  law  that  this  energy  in  the  end  consumes  itself. 
Perhaps  the  history  of  the  Greek  mind  is  best  read  in  the 
characteristics  of  its  three  great  dramatists — sublime  and 
wilful  in  ;£schylus,  beautiful  in  Sophocles,  sentimental  in 
Euripides.  The  Greek  deified  man,  first  as  an  object  of 
religion,  then  as  an  object  of  art.  Now  as  it  is  a  conse- 
quence of  high  culture  that  a  superstition,  having  its 
source  in  human  passions,  shall  subside  from  a  religion 
into  an  art,  the  Greek  became  atheistical  as  he  grew  intel- 
ligent. He  had,  so  to  speak,  a  taste  for  divinities,  but  no 
belief  in  them.  He  acknowledged  nothing  higher  than 
his  own  mind;  waxed  measurelessly  proud  and  conceited; 
worshipped,  in  fact,  himself.  He  had  opinions  on  morals, 


INTELLECTUAL   HEALTH   AND   DISEASE  369 

but  he  assimilated  no  moral  ideas.  Now  the  moment  he 
became  an  atheist,  the  moment  he  ceased  to  rise  above 
himself,  he  began  to  decay.  The  strength  at  the  heart 
of  a  nation,  which  keeps  it  alive,  must  either  grow  or 
dwindle;  and,  after  a  certain  stage  in  its  progress,  it  can 
only  grow  by  assimilating  moral  and  religious  truth. 
Moral  corruption,  which  is  the  result  of  wilful  energy,  eats 
into  the  very  substance  and  core  of  intellectual  life.  En- 
ergy, it  is  true,  is  requisite  to  all  greatness  of  soul;  but 
the  energy  of  health,  while  it  has  the  strength  and  fear- 
lessness of  Prometheus  chained  to  the  rock,  or  Satan  buffet- 
ing the  billows  of  fire,  is  also  meek,  aspiring,  and  rever- 
ential. Its  spirit  is  that  of  the  stout  old  martyr,  who  told 
the  trembling  brethren  of  the  faith  who  clustered  around 
his  funeral  pyre,  that  if  his  soul  was  serene  in  its  last  strug- 
gle with  death,  he  would  lift  up  his  hands  to  them  as  a 
sign.  They  watched,  with  tremulous  eagerness,  the  fierce 
element  as  it  swept  along  and  over  his  withered  frame, 
and,  in  the  awful  agonies  of  that  moment  when  he  was 
encircled  with  fire,  and  wholly  hidden  from  their  view, 
two  thin  hands  quivered  up  above  fagot  and  flame  and 
closed  in  the  form  of  prayer. 

In  the  Greek  mind  the  wilful  element  took  the  form 
of  conceit  rather  than  pride,  and  it  is  therefore  in  the  civili- 
zation of  Rome  that  we  must  seek  for  the  best  expression 
of  the  power  and  the  weakness  of  Satanic  passion.  The 
myth  which  declares  its  founders  to  have  been  suckled  by 
a  wolf  aptly  symbolizes  that  base  of  ferocity  and  iron  will 
on  which  its  colossal  dominion  was  raised.  The  Roman 
mind,  if  we  look  at  it  in  relation  to  its  all-conquering  cour- 
age and  intelligence,  had  many  sublime  qualities;  but 
pride — hard,  fierce,  remorseless,  invulnerable  pride — and 
contempt  of  right,  was  its  ruling  characteristic.  It  existed 
just  as  long  as  it  had  power  to  crush  opposition.  But 
avarice,  licentiousness,  effeminacy,  the  whole  brood  of 
the  abject  vices,  are  sure  at  last  to  fasten  on  the  con- 
queror, humbling  his  proud  will,  and  turning  his  strength 
into  weakness.  The  heart  of  that  vast  empire  was  ulcer- 
ated long  before  it  fell.  The  sensuality  of  a  Mark  Antony 
is  a  more  frightful  thing  than  the  sensuality  of  a  savage; 
and  when  self-abandonment  thus  succeeds  to  self-worship, 


--0  WHIPPLE 

and  men  are  literally  given  over  to  their  lusts,  a  state  of 
society  exists  which,  in  its  demoniacal  contempt  of  re- 
straint, sets  all  description  at  defiance.  The  irruption  of 
barbarian  energy  into  that  worn-out  empire — the  fierce 
horde  of  savages  that  swept  in  a  devouring  flame  over  its 
plains  and  cities — we  view  with  something  of  the  grim 
satisfaction  with  which  an  old  Hebrew  might  have  sur- 
veyed the  ingulfing  of  Pharaoh  and  his  host  in  the  waters 
of  the  Red  Sea. 

In  the  dark  ages  which  succeeded  the  overthrow  of  the 
Roman  Empire  modern  civilization  had  its  birth;  and 
with  those  ages  it  is  still  connected  by  an  organic  bond. 
This  civilization  is  the  most  complex  that  ever  existed. 
If  we  pass  back  to  its  youth,  we  find  in  it  two  grand  lead- 
ing principles  of  order  and  disorder,  of  health  and  disease, 
whose  contact,  collision,  and  union  almost  constitute  its 
history.  These  are  the  feudal  system  and  the  Christian 
Church.  Now  feudalism  is  the  embodiment  of  Satanic 
pride.  Its  will  is  its  law.  It  does  everything  it  has  power 
to  do,  without  regard  to  the  judgment  of  Heaven  or  earth. 
It  plants  its  iron  heel  firm  upon  the  weak,  and  lifts  its  iron 
front  firm  upon  the  strong,  and  says,  in  its  pitiless  valour, 
"  What  I  obtained  by  force  take  by  force  if  you  can."  I 
speak  not  of  the  feudalism  of  romance,  but  of  history;  not 
as  we  find  it  in  Miss  Porter's  novels,  but  as  we  find  it  in 
the  pages  of  Froissart  and  Monstrelet,  of  Michelet  and 
Thierry.  Feudalism  as  a  fact  was  a  cruel  and  remorseless 
oligarchy,  in  which  a  horde  of  independent  barons,  ac- 
knowledging allegiance  to  a  central  power  in  the  state, 
but  nullifying  the  decisions  of  that  power  at  their  own 
pleasure,  wielded  a  merciless  dominion  over  a  nation  of 
serfs.  Now  this  relation  of  master  and  slave,  this  division 
of  tyranny  into  many  parts,  and  making  each  man  a  tyrant 
in  his  own  domain,  is  the  devil's  own  contrivance  for  ruin- 
ing both  the  oppressor  and  the  oppressed.  It  corrupts, 
corrodes,  and  consumes  the  inmost  principle  of  national 
life.  Accordingly,  the  chronicles  of  the  middle  ages  teem 
with  crimes  which  almost  realize  a  good-natured  man's 
idea  of  the  bottomless  pit.  Hatred,  rapine,  revenge,  lust, 
blasphemy — all  those  ferocious  and  suicidal  vices  which 
slowly  consume  the  vigour  whence  they  spring — rage  and 


INTELLECTUAL   HEALTH   AND   DISEASE  371 

revel  there,  with  that  peculiar  demoniacal  scorn  of  re- 
straint which  characterizes  the  brutalities  of  a  spiritual 
being.  The  popular  insurrections  of  the  period  reveal,  as 
by  a  flash  of  lightning,  the  condition  of  that  vaunted  soci- 
ety where  capital  owns  labour.  For  a  moment  you  see 
the  serf  burst  his  bonds,  pass  from  the  brute  into  the 
maniac,  and  rush  into  the  insanest  excesses  of  licentious- 
ness; and  then  comes  the  mailed  baron,  cool,  collected, 
ruthless  in  his  ferocity,  trampling  him  down  again  with 
the  diabolical  malignity  of  inhuman  strength.  But  hatred 
indulged  to  inferiors  eventually  generates  hatred  to  equals, 
and  poisons  at  last  the  domestic  relation  itself.  The  un- 
natural crimes  which  blacken  the  annals  of  so  many  fami- 
lies, ironically  styled  noble — father  arrayed  against  son, 
brother  against  brother,  and  murder  staining  the  very 
hearth-stones  of  the  baronial  castle — are  but  the  final  re- 
sults of  pampered  self-will,  conducting  us  into  the  black 
depths  of  minds,  in  whom  hatred  and  moody  pride  have 
extinguished  the  last  instinct  to  which  reverence  can 
cling. 

Still,  you  may  contend,  in  these  old  barons  there  dwelt 
a  tremendous  force.  True:  but  was  it  durable?  Who  are 
their  descendants?  Mere  weaklings  in  comparison  with 
the  descendants  of  their  former  serfs.  Where  is  their 
system?  Why,  its  fossil  remains  blew  up  not  eighteen 
months  ago,  and  a  wondering  people,  who  had  long  been 
scared  by  its  frowning  looks,  found  it  to  be  a  mere  miser- 
able shell  and  sham,  its  life  and  substance  all  eaten  away 
— "  self-fed  and  self-consumed." 

But  side  by  side  with  this  feudalism  was  established 
the  Christian  Church.  Thus  pandemonium  and  heaven 
were  both,  so  to  speak,  organized  on  earth;  acted  and 
reacted  on  each  other,  and  passed  into  each  other's  life. 
The  consequence  of  this  mixture  of  principles  was  that 
the  Church  was  corrupted,  and  feudalism  improved,  even- 
tually to  be  destroyed.  There  was  at  least  the  recogni- 
tion of  something  higher  than  man,  something  which  the 
soul  might  reverence.  This  was  the  salvation  of  modern 
society,  as  it  continually  poured  into  veins,  shrunken  and 
withered  by  moral  evil,  some  rills  of  moral  life.  The 
leading  characteristic,  however,  of  religion,  at  the  period 


WHIPPLE 

of  which  we  are  speaking,  consisted  in  its  being  an  opin- 
ion or  a  fanaticism.  The  feudal  baron  would  have  been 
shocked  had  you  called  him  an  atheist,  even  while  per- 
forming acts  and  pampering  passions  which  are  the 
essence  of  atheism,  for  he  held  to  Christianity  as  an  opin- 
ion; and  when  some  overpowering  calamity  broke  down 
his  stubborn  will,  and  remorse  fixed  its  fangs  upon  his 
heart,  he  was  as  liable  as  the  most  slavish  of  his  serfs  to 
be  swept  away  in  a  torrent  of  fanaticism.  But  this  fanati- 
cism, though  itself  a  disease,  and  representing  a  will  in 
ruins  rather  than  a  character  built  up,  is  still  a  reaction 
against  pride,  and  limits  the  ravages  of  moral  evil,  as 
physical  suffering  limits  unbridled  appetites. 

Now,  if  we  examine  modern  history  with  a  view  to 
observe  the  working  of  the  religious  element  in  its  events 
— watching  this  element  as  it  mingles  with  the  harsher 
qualities  of  that  mass  of  humanity  of  whose  life  it  forms 
a  part — we  can  not  fail  to  notice  its  agency  in  every  great 
social  convulsion  which  has  saved  modern  civilization  from 
the  death  of  the  ancient,  and  saved  it  by  toppling  down 
the  institutions  in  which  its  social  disease  had  come  to  a 
head.  But  we  shall  also  see  that  each  reform  and  revolu- 
tion has  partaken  of  the  corruption  of  the  community  in 
which  it  originated;  has  been  but  an  inadequate  expres- 
sion of  moral  force;  and  has  exhibited  unmistakable  signs 
of  the  Satanic  element  blended  with  its  beneficent  pur- 
pose. In  short,  modern  civilization,  in  regard  to  its  life, 
is  a  corrupted  Christianity.  It  has  opinions  more  or  less 
true,  but  it  has  imperfectly  assimilated  truth.  It  assents 
to  perfect  doctrines,  but  it  lives  a  kind  of  Christian  diabo- 
lism. Consequently,  all  the  great  movements  of  the  Euro- 
pean mind  have  been  but  fits  of  splendid  fanaticism,  fol- 
lowed by  reactions  toward  apathy;  and  have  indicated 
little  more  than  the  desperate  moral  disease  they  partially 
eradicated.  The  Crusades,  the  Reformation,  the  English 
Revolutions  of  1640  and  1688,  the  French  Revolutions  of 
1789  and  1848,  all  prove  that  a  community  can  not  lift 
itself  by  a  convulsive  throe  above  the  high-water  mark  of 
its  practical  life.  Its  contortions  are  signs  of  vitality,  but 
of  vitality  struggling  with  death.  There  has  been  progress 
in  European  society,  if  we  reckon  it  not  by  years  but  cen- 


INTELLECTUAL   HEALTH   AND   DISEASE  373 

turies;  but  it  has  been  a  progress  marked  by  jerks  rather 
than  by  steps.  It  has  not  yet  arrived  at  that  degree  of 
spiritual  force,  that  momentum  of  moral  energy,  which  is 
the  condition  of  healthy  motion — of  steady,  temperate,  de- 
termined, onward,  ever  onward  movement.  At  the  pres- 
ent time  it  presents  no  spectacle  of  order,  but  rather  of 
disorder  after  stagnation.  Peace  it  does  not  deserve,  and 
peace  it  will  not  obtain.  Repose  is  harmonious  activity, 
the  top  and  crown  of  the  highest  force,  leaning  for  sup- 
port on  eternal  laws;  not  that  sultry  and  sluggish  apathy 
which  lazily  welters  in  fleeting  expedients.  The  legitimist, 
who  would  establish  apathy  under  the  forms  of  monarchy; 
the  agrarian,  who  would  establish  apathy  under  the  forms 
of  communism,  are  both  mistaking  immobility  for  order, 
and  seeking  material  happiness  through  intellectual  death. 
Comfort  is  the  god  of  this  world,  but, comfort  it  will  never 
obtain  by  making  it  an  object. 

In  considering  the  national  life  of  our  own  country,  I 
would  wish  to  treat  it  neither  in  the  style  of  a  Jeremiad, 
nor  in  the  style  of  a  Fourth-of-July  oration.  Our  national 
life  is  peculiar,  not  only  as  a  composite  formed  from  an 
imperfect  fusion  of  different  races,  but  it  is  open  to  influ- 
ences from  all  ages  and  all  times.  Though  a  civilization 
may  die,  it  leaves  imperishable  records  of  itself  in  history 
and  in  literature,  and  these,  after  the  nation  itself  is  dead, 
become  living  and  active  agents  in  moulding  the  natures 
of  all  with  whom  they  come  in  contact.  Accordingly,  as 
everybody  here  reads  or  listens,  India,  Greece,  and  Rome, 
as  well  as  Germany,  France,  and  England,  rush  into  our 
national  life  through  a  thousand  conductors — their  dis- 
eased as  well  as  healthy  elements  becoming  objects  which 
we  assimilate,  and  which  palpably  affect  our  conduct.  The 
conceit  of  Greece,  the  pride  of  Rome,  the  arrogance  of 
feudal  Europe,  speak  and  act  in  America  to-day  from  the 
lips  and  in  the  lives  of  democrat  and  moneycrat,  of  philan- 
thropist and  misanthrope.  The  national  life,  in  short,  is 
to  a  certain  extent  diseased,  and  our  people  more  or  less 
believe  in  the  capital  error  that  they  can  thrive  by  selfish- 
ness, injustice,  and  energy  unregulated  by  law. 

This  wilful  element  is  so  modified  by  institutions,  that 
in  the  Northerner  it  appears  as  conceit,  in  the  Southerner 


WHIPPLE 

as  pride.  Both  doubtless  possess  great  virtues,  but  as 
both  are  sufficiently  well  acquainted  with  that  fact,  let  us 
here  dwell  ungraciously  on  the  vices  of  each.  The  leading 
defect  of  the  Yankee  consists  in  the  gulf  which  separates 
his  moral  opinions  from  his  moral  principles.  His  talk 
about  virtue  in  the  abstract  would  pass  as  sound  in  a 
nation  of  saints,  but  he  still  contrives  that  his  interests 
shall  not  suffer  by  the  rigidity  of  his  maxims.  He  goes, 
so  to  speak,  for  the  linen  decencies  of  sin;  and  the  Evil 
One,  being  an  accommodating  personage,  will  as  readily 
appear  in  satin  slippers  as  in  cloven  hoofs.  Your  true 
Yankee,  indeed,  has  a  spruce,  clean,  Pecksniffian  way  of 
doing  a  wrong,  which  is  inimitable.  He  passes  resolutions 
declaring  himself  the  most  moral  and  religious  man  in  the 
land,  and  then,  with  the  solemn  strut  of  an  Alsatian  hero, 
proceeds  to  the  practical  business  of  life.  Believing,  after 
a  certain  fashion,  in  justice  and  retribution,  he  still  thinks 
that  a  sly,  shrewd,  keen,  supple  gentleman  like  himself, 
can  dodge,  in  a  quiet  way,  the  moral  laws  of  the  universe, 
without  any  particular  pother  being  made  about  it.  He 
is  a  self-admiration  society  in  one.  He  will  never  be  first 
in  a  scheme  of  rapine;  but,  once  drawn  in,  to  him,  as  to 
Macbeth,  returning  is  as  tedious  as  to  go  on.  If  you 
ask  his  opinion  about  a  recent  war,  he  will  put  on  a  moral 
face,  declare  bloodshed  to  be  an  exceedingly  naughty 
business,  and  roll  off  a  series  of  resounding  schoolboy 
commonplaces,  as  though  he  expected  a  choir  of  descend- 
ing angels  had  paused  in  mid  air  to  hear  and  be  edified; 
but  then,  he  adds  with  a  compromising  chuckle,  that  it 
was  an  amazingly  bright  thing  though,  that  whipping  of 
the  Mexicans!  Here  it  is — he  really  believes  in  whipping 
the  weak.  He  loves  energy  in  itself,  apart  from  the  pur- 
poses which  make  energy  beneficent;  and  as  he  is  apt  to 
deem  his  intelligence  appropriately  employed  in  preying 
on  those  who  have  less,  his  practical  philosophy  has  some- 
times found  vent  in  that  profound  and  elegant  maxim — 
"  Every  one  for  himself,  and  Satan  catch  the  hindmost." 
True,  Satan  does  catch  the  hindmost,  but  all  history 
teaches  that  in  the  end  he  catches  the  foremost  also. 

But,  I  think  I  hear  you  ask,  what  say  you  of  our  phi- 
lanthropy?    Certainly  nothing  here  as  to  its  beneficent 


INTELLECTUAL   HEALTH   AND   DISEASE  375 

action,  but  a  word  as  to  its  diseased  aspect.  It  is  to  be 
feared  that  our  benevolence  is  more  opinion  than  life,  and, 
accordingly,  it  is  apt  to  degenerate  into  sentimentality  or 
malice;  to  be  mere  inoffensively  ineffective  primer  moral- 
ity and  elegant  recreation  of  conscience,  or  morose,  snap- 
pish, and  snarling  invective;  in  other  words,  to  lack  will, 
or  to  be  wilful.  In*' a  community  whose  life  is  in  any 
way  diseased,  it  is  difficult  for  the  best  men  to  escape  the 
ruling  contagion;  to  oppose  an  evil  without  catching  it; 
to  war  with  the  devil  without  using  the  devil's  own 
weapons. 

But  perhaps  the  chief  Satanic  element  in  our  national 
life  comes  from  the  South.  There,  in  the  "  full  tide  "  of 
unsuccessful  "  experiment,"  is  a  feudal  system,  modified 
by  modern  humanity,  but  modified  also  by  modern  thrift. 
The  feudal  baron  did  not  sell  his  serfs.  Now,  this  peculiar 
institution  has  one  vital  evil  which  alone  would  ruin  any 
country  outside  of  Adam's  paradise — it  makes  labour  dis- 
reputable. But  it  is  bad  in  every  respect,  corrupting  the 
life  both  of  master  and  slave;  and  it  will  inevitably  end,  if 
allowed  to  work  out  its  own  damnation,  in  a  storm  of  fire 
and  blood,  or  in  mental  and  moral  sterility  and  death. 
Looking  at  it,  not  sentimentally  or  shrewishly,  much  less 
with  any  mean  feeling  of  local  exultation,  but  simply  with 
the  eye  of  reason — what  is  it  but  a  rude  and  shallow  sys- 
tem of  government,  which  has  been  tried  over  and  over 
again,  and  exploded  over  and  over  again,  the  mere  cast- 
off  nonsense  of  extinct  civilizations,  bearing  on  its  front 
the  sign  of  being  a  more  stupid  blunder  than  it  is  a  crime? 
Now,  we  can  sympathize  with  a  person  who  has  had  the 
gout  transmitted  to  him,  the  only  legacy  of  a  loving 
father;  but  that  a  man  should  go  deliberately  to  work, 
bottle  in  hand,  to  establish  the  gout  in  his  own  system, 
is  an  absurdity  which  touches  the  Quixotic  in  diabolism. 
Yet  this,  or  something  like  to  this,  has  been  gravely  pro- 
posed, and  some  of  our  Southern  brethren  have  requested 
us  to  aid  in  the  ludicrously  iniquitous  work.  No;  we 
should  say  to  these  gentlemen,  If  you  have  a  taste  for  the 
ingenuities  of  mischief,  plant,  if  you  will,  on  your  new 
territory,  small-pox  and  typhus  fever,  plant  plague,  cholera, 
and  pestilence,  but  refrain,  if  not  from  common  honesty, 


WHIPPLE 

at  least  from  common  intelligence,  from  planting  a  moral 
disease  infinitely  more  destructive,  and  which  will  make 
the  world  shake  with  laughter  or  execrations,  according 
as  men  consider  the  madness  of  its  folly,  or  the  brazen 
impudence  of  its  guilt. 

In  these  remarks  on  Intellectual  Disease  I  have  re- 
ferred all  along,  negatively  at  least,  to  intellectual  health. 
We  have  seen  that  this  health  consists  neither  in  the  self- 
abandonment  of  the  sensitively  weak,  nor  the  self-worship 
of  the  wilfully  strong.  A  few  words  more,  to  guard 
against  some  possible  misconceptions.  Self-direction  of 
mental  power,  which  has  been  assumed  as  the  condition  of 
healthy  mind,  is  the  only  possible  means  of  self-devotion, 
of  self-sacrifice,  of  rising  above  self.  It  indicates  a  mind 
serene,  cheerful,  hopeful,  courageous,  ever  active,  ever 
aspiring,  with  reverence  for  all  above  itself,  and  genial 
love,  not  bitter  contempt,  for  all  below.  But  I  might  well 
be  accused  of  shallow  philosophy  did  I  leave  the  subject 
here.  Mind,  it  is  true,  is  free  spiritual  force,  but  it  is  in- 
scrutably dependent  on  the  force  which  created  it.  It  is 
a  cause,  but  a  limited  cause;  a  power,  constituted  such  by 
an  Infinite  Power;  and  it  grows  mightier  as  it  ascends  to 
its  source.  In  this  connection,  let  me  not  presume  to 
speak,  but  call  witnesses  from  the  mountain  peaks  and 
pinnacles  of  intellect — beings  who  rose  thither  in  virtue 
of  an  amazing  force  directed  upward — that  they  may  testify 
to  their  deep  sense  of  this  mysterious  dependence.  Thus 
Newton  closes  the  greatest  work  of  pure  science  which 
ever  came  from  the  mind  of  man,  with  an  affecting  thanks- 
giving to  that  Infinite  Intelligence  who  bestowed  the 
power  which  produced  it.  Thus  Spenser,  with  his  exhaust- 
less  opulence  of  fanciful  creation,  and  burning  sense  of 
the  loveliness  of  things,  can  still  find  in  the  world  of  Na- 
ture and  the  world  of  imagination  no  fit  symbols  of  the 
vision  which  haunts  his  soul,  until  it  is  lifted  up  in  a 
"  Hymn  to  Heavenly  Beauty."  Thus  Milton,  in  whom 
glowed  a  spirit  that  braved  every  storm  of  fortune  and 
spurned  every  touch  of  fear,  from  whose  brow  glanced 
harmless  the  thunders  of  dominant  hierarchies,  and  who, 
opposed  to  unnatural  persecution  adamantine  will,  still 
never  "  soared  in  the  high  reason  of  his  fancies,  with  his 


INTELLECTUAL   HEALTH   AND   DISEASE  377 

garland  and  singing  robes  about  him,"  without  first,  in 
his  own  divine  words,  "  pouring  out  his  soul  in  devout 
prayer  to  that  Eternal  Spirit,  who  can  enrich  with  all  utter- 
ance and  knowledge,  and  sends  out  his  seraphim,  with  the 
hallowed  fire  of  his  altar,  to  touch  and  purify  the  lips  of 
whom  he  pleases."  And  from  one  of  England's  most 
curious  and  not  least  skeptical  of  intellects,  a  deep  and 
prying  inquirer  into  the  mysteries  of  his  consciousness, 
comes  that  burst  of  mournful  rapture,  which  has  awed  and 
thrilled  every  soul  in  which  it  has  entered,  that  "  there  is 
a  common  spirit  which  plays  within  us  yet  makes  no  part 
of  us,  the  spirit  of  God,  the  fire  and  scintillation  of  that 
noble  and  mighty  essence  which  is  the  life  and  radical 
heat  of  all  minds;  and,"  he  adds,  "  whosoever  feels  not  the 
warm  breath  and  gentle  ventilation  of  this  spirit  (though 
I  feel  his  pulse),  I  can  not  say  he  lives;  for,  truly,  without 
this,  to  me  there  is  no  heat  under  the  tropic,  and  no  light, 
though  I  dwelt  in  the  very  body  of  the  sun." 


HINDRANCES 
TO  SPIRITUAL  GROWTH 

BY 

JOHN    CAMPBELL   SHAIRP 


JOHN  CAMPBELL  SHAIRP  was  born  in  Scotland,  July  30,  1819.  He  was 
graduated  in  1844  at  Oxford,  where  he  took  high  honours,  and  from  1846 
to  1857  was  Master  at  Rugby.  He  then  became  Professor  of  Latin  at  St. 
Andrews,  and  in  1868  succeeded  to  the  principalship.  He  was  Professor 
of  Poetry  *t  Oxford  from  1877  till  he  died,  September  18,  1885.  His  love 
of  his  native  land  was  so  intense  that  he  considered  any  summer  wasted 
if  it  was  not  spent  in  Scotland.  He  enjoyed  the  friendship  and  confidence 
of  many  eminent  men,  and  is  described  as  a  most  genial  and  lovable  char- 
acter. He  wrote  many  fugitive  poems,  which  had  their  admirers,  and 
several  volumes  of  essays,  including  "  Studies  in  Poetry  and  Philosophy," 
"Culture  and  Religion  in  some  of  their  Relations,"  "The  Poetic  Inter- 
pretation of  Nature,"  and  "  Sketches  in  History  and  Poetry."  His 
studies  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  are  especially  valuable. 


HINDRANCES  TO   SPIRITUAL   GROWTH 

IT  has  often  happened  that  when  the  sons  of  a  family, 
after  having  been  for  some  sessions  at  college,  have 
returned  to  their  own  homes,  bursars,  or  scholars,  or 
M.  A.'s  with  honours,  the  family  have  felt  that  somehow 
they  were  changed,  had  lost  their  old  simple  natures,  and 
for  this  loss  college  learning  and  distinctions  seemed  but  a 
poor  substitute.  This,  however,  may  be  only  a  temporary 
result  of  severe  mental  tension  and  seclusion.  When  the 
bow  has  been  for  a  time  unstrung,  the  unnaturalness 
passes,  and  the  native,  simple  self  reappears. 

But  I  have  known  other  stories  than  these.  I  have 
heard  of  devout  and  self-denying  parents,  working  late  and 
early,  and  stinting  themselves  to  send  their  sons  to  college, 
and  in  sending  them  their  fond  hope  was  that  these  young 
men  would  return  stored  with  knowledge  and  wisdom, 
and  be  able  to  help  their  parents  in  those  religious  sub- 
jects on  which  their  hearts  were  most  set.  Such  hopes, 
we  may  trust,  have  many  times  been  realized.  But  one 
has  heard  of  cases  which  had  another  issue.  A  young  man 
has  come  home,  after  a  college  course,  acute,  logical, 
speculative,  full  of  the  newest  views,  prating  of  high  mat- 
ters, scientific  and  philosophical,  a  very  prodigy  of  en- 
lightenment. But  that  on  which  early  piety  had  fed  was 
forsaken,  the  old  reverence  was  gone,  and  the  parents  saw, 
with  helpless  sorrow,  that  their  son  had  chosen  for  him- 
self a  far  other  road  than  that  on  which  they  were  trav- 
elling, and  in  which  they  had  hoped  he  would  travel 
with  them. 

It  is  a  common  tale,  one  which  has  often  been  re- 
peated, but  none  the  less  pathetic  for  that.  It  brings  be- 
fore us  the  collision  that  often  occurs  when  newly 
awakened  intellect  first  meets  with  early  faith.  No  one 

381 


382  SHAIRP 

who  has  observed  men  ever  so  little  but  must  know 
something,  either  through  his  own  experience  or  from 
watching  others,  of  these  travail-pangs  that  often  accom- 
pany the  birth  of  thought. 

The  special  trial  of  each  spirit  lies  in  that  very  field  in 
which  his  strength  and  activity  are  put  forth.  The  tempta- 
tion of  the  busy  trader  does  not  consist  in  mental  question- 
ings, but  in  the  tendency  to  inordinate  love  of  gain.  The 
aesthetic  spirit  finds  its  trial,  not  in  coarse  pleasures,  but  in 
the  temptation  to  follow  beauty  exclusively,  and  to  turn 
effeminately  from  duty  and  self-denial.  And  in  like  man- 
ner the  student  or  man  of  letters  will  most  likely  find  his 
trial  in  dealing  rightly  with  the  intellectual  side  of  things, 
giving  to  it  its  due  place,  and  not  more.  What  are  some 
of  the  difficulties  and  temptations  which  the  student  is 
apt  to  meet  with,  and  which  may  be  the  best  way  to  deal 
with  them? — this  is  the  subject  which  will  engage  us  to- 
day. Before  entering  on  it,  however,  let  me  say  distinctly 
that  I  do  not  believe  that  painful  questionings  and  violent 
mental  convulsions  are  an  ordeal  which  all  thoughtful  per- 
sons must  needs  pass  through.  So  far  from  this,  some  of 
the  finest  spirits,  those  whose  vision  is  most  intuitive  and 
penetrating,  are  the  most  exempt  from  such  anxious  soul- 
travail.  Indeed,  I  believe  that  there  is  no  such  safeguard 
against  the  worst  consequences  of  such  perplexities  as  a 
heart  that  is  pure,  humble,  and  "  at  leisure  from  itself." 
In  the  words  of  a  modern  divine,  one  well  known  at  the 
present  time,  both  as  an  upholder  of  freedom  of  inquiry, 
and  also  as  a  religious  and  devoted  man: 

'  There  are  some  who  are  never  troubled  with  doubts 
at  all.  They  live  so  heavenly  a  life  that  doubts  and  per- 
plexities fall  off  their  minds  without  fastening.  They  find 
enough  in  their  faith  to  feed  their  spiritual  life.  They  do 
not  need  to  inquire  into  the  foundations  of  their  belief, 
they  are  inspired  by  a  power  within  their  hearts.  The 
heavenly  side  of  all  truths  is  so  clear  to  them  that  any 
doubts  about  the  human  form  of  it  are  either  unintelligible 
or  else  at  once  rejected.  They  grow  in  knowledge  by 
quiet,  steady  increase  of  light,  without  any  intervals  of 
darkness  and  difficulty.  This  is  the  most  blessed  state — 
that  of  those  who  can  believe  without  the  evidence  either 


HINDRANCES  TO   SPIRITUAL  GROWTH  383 

of  sense  or  of  laboured  argument.  There  are  such  minds. 
There  are  those  to  whom  the  inward  proof  is  everything. 
They  believe  not  on  the  evidence  of  their  senses,  or  of  their 
mere  reason,  but  on  that  of  their  consciences  and  hearts. 
Their  spirits  within  them  are  so  attuned  to  the  truth  that 
the  moment  it  is  presented  to  them  they  accept  it  at  once. 
And  this  is  certainly  the  higher  state,  the  more  blessed, 
the  more  heavenly." 

These  are  they  who  have  always  rejoiced  in  a  serene, 
unclouded  vision  till  they  are  taken  home.  And  we  have 
known  such. 

Let  none,  therefore,  pique  themselves  on  having 
doubts  and  questionings  on  religious  subjects,  as  if  it  were 
a  fine  thing  to  have  them,  proving  them  to  be  intellectual 
athletes,  and  entitling  thepi  to  look  down  on  those  who 
are  free  from  them  as  inferior  persons,  less  mentally  gifted. 
For  there  is  a  higher  state  than  their  own — there  is  a 
purer  atmosphere,  which  has  been  breathed  by  persons  of 
as  strong  intellect  as  themselves,  but  of  a  finer  spirit.  But 
such  is  not  the  state  of  all  thoughtful  men.  There  are  many 
who  when  they  reach  the  reasoning  age  find  themselves 
in  the  midst  of  many  difficulties,  hedged  in  with  "  per- 
plexities which  they  can  not  explain  to  themselves,  much 
less  to  others,  and  no  one  to  help  them."  They  are  afraid 
to  tell  their  sad  heart-secrets  to  others,  and  especially  to 
their  elders,  lest  they  find  no  sympathy.  And  so  they  are 
tempted  to  shut  them  up  within  their  own  breasts,  and 
brood  over  them  till  they  get  morbid  and  magnify  their 
difficulties  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  reality.  In  the 
case  of  such  persons  it  becomes  a  serious  question  how 
they  should  be  advised  to  treat  the  difficulties  that  occur 
to  them.  On  the  one  hand,  while  they  are  not  to  make 
little  questions  of  great  consequence,  neither  must  they 
make  grave  questions  and  perplexities  of  little  conse- 
quence. They  are  to  be  told  that  while  all  doubts  are  pain- 
ful, all  are  not  necessarily  wrong.  For  some  are  natural, 
born  of  honesty,  and,  when  rightly  dealt  with,  have  often 
ere  now  become  the  birth-pangs  of  larger  knowledge — 
the  straits  through  which  men  passed  to  clearer  light. 
There  are,  on  the  other  hand,  doubts  which  are  sinful, 
born  of  levity,  irreverence,  and  self-conceit,  or  of  a  hard 


SHAIRP 

and  perverted  conscience.  To  determine  to  which  class 
any  particular  mental  perplexities  belong  is  not  easy  for 
a  man  even  in  his  own  case;  much  more  is  it  difficult,  nay, 
impossible,  for  us  to  read  the  mental  state  of  another,  and 
pronounce  judgment  on  it.  The  fact  that  some  doubts 
are  not  sinless,  that  they  may  arise  out  of  the  state  of  a 
man's  spirit,  suggests  to  every  one  cautiousness  and  self- 
scrutiny.  This  is  a  work  which  no  man  can  do  for  his 
brother.  Each  man  must  take  his  own  difficulties  into  the 
light  of  conscience  and  of  God,  and  there  deal  with  them 
honestly  yet  humbly,  seeking  to  be  guided  aright.  For 
the  spirit  of  a  man  is  a  very  delicate  instrument,  which,  if 
it  be  distorted  out  of  its  natural  course,  this  way  or  that, 
by  prejudice  or  interest  or  double-dealing  on  the  one  hand, 
or  foolhardiness  and  self-confidence  on  the  other,  may 
never  perhaps  in  this  life  recover  its  equilibrium. 

I  should  be  loath  to  seem  to  trespass  either  on  the 
speculative  field  of  the  theological  professor,  or  on  the 
practical  one  of  the  Christian  minister.  But,  without  do- 
ing either,  there  is  room  enough  for  offering  such  sugges- 
tions as  have  been  gathered  from  a  number  of  years  not 
unobservant  of  what  has  been  going  on  in  that  border 
land  where  faith  and  knowledge  meet.  To  young  and 
ardent  spirits  the  wrestling  with  hard  questions  on  the 
very  verge  of  human  knowledge  has  a  wonderful  fascina- 
tion. They  throw  themselves  fearlessly  into  the  abyss, 
and  think  that  they  shall  be  able  to  dive  down  to  depths 
hitherto  unsounded.  Problems  that  have  baffled  the 
world's  best  thinkers  will,  they  fancy,  yield  up  to  them 
their  secret.  Yet  these  things  "  do  take  a  sober  colour- 
ing "  from  eyes  which  have  seen  too  many  young  men, 
some  of  them  the  finest  spirits  of  our  time',  setting  forth  in 
over-confidence  in  their  own  powers,  imagining  that  they 
were  sufficient  to  meet  all  difficulties,  and  coming  before 
long  to  mournful  shipwreck.  When  experience  has  im- 
pressed us  with  the  full  importance  of  the  mental  tend- 
encies for  good  and  for  evil  which  often  begin  at  college, 
who  would  not  be  earnestly  disposed  to  turn  his  experi- 
ence, if  he  might,  to  the  help  of  those  younger  than  him- 
self, at  that  interesting  time  of  life  when  they  most  need 
help,  and  often  least  find  it?  But  then  there  comes  upon 


HINDRANCES   TO   SPIRITUAL   GROWTH  385 

the  mind  the  conviction  that  this  is  an  issue  wherein,  in  the 
last  resort,  no  one  can  bear  his  brother's  burden.  All  that 
we  can  do  is  to  suggest  certain  dangers  to  which  the 
student  is  from  the  nature  of  his  occupations  peculiarly 
exposed,  and  to  leave  it  to  each  for  himself  to  apply  what 
is  said  conscientiously,  according  as  he  feels  that  it  bears 
on  his  need. 

The  first  hindrance  I  will  notice  is  one  which  arises 
out  of  the  very  nature  of  mental  cultivation.  If  there  is 
one  thing  which  more  than  another  distinguishes  a  well- 
trained  mind,  it  is  the  power  of  thinking  clearly,  of  divid- 
ing with  a  sharp  line  between  its  knowledge  and  its  igno- 
rance. One  of  the  best  results  of  a  logical  and  also  of  a 
scientific  discipline  is  that  it  leads  us  to  form  definite, 
clearly  cut  conceptions  of  things.  Indeed,  this  power  of 
limiting,  defining,  making  a  0/309  or  bound  round  each 
object  you  think  of,  and  thus  making  them  thinkable,  is 
of  the  very  essence  of  thought.  For  what  is  all  thought 
but  a  rescuing,  a  cutting  off  by  the  mind's  inherent  power 
of  bounding,  objects  from  out  the  vague  and  undefined? 
But  this  quality  of  all  thought,  which  in  trained  thought 
is  raised  to  a  higher  power,  while  it  constitutes  mental 
strength,  contains  also  its  own  weakness,  or  rather  limita- 
tion. Clearly  defined  knowledge  is  mainly  of  things  we 
see.  All  find  it  much  easier  to  form  definite  conceptions 
of  objects  of  the  outer  sense  than  of  objects  of  the  inner 
sense — to  conceive  clearly  things  we  see,  hear,  and  touch, 
than  those  thoughts  which  have  not  any  outward  object 
corresponding  to  them.  If  thoughts  are  difficult  ade- 
quately to  grasp,  much  more  are  emotions — with  their  in- 
finite complexity,  their  evanescent  shades.  But  each  man 
gains  a  power  of  realizing  and  firmly  conceiving  those 
things  he  habitually  deals  with,  and  not  other  things.  The 
man  whose  training  has  lain  exclusively  in  physics,  accu- 
rately conceives  physical  forces,  however  subtle,  and  can 
lay  down  their  relations  to  each  other;  but  then  he  will 
probably  be  comparatively  weak  in  apprehending  sub- 
tleties of  thought  and  mental  relations.  Again,  the  mere 
logician,  while  strong  to  grasp  logical  distinctions,  will 
generally  be  found  comparatively  at  sea  when  he  has  to 


386 


SHAIRP 


catch  the  imaginative  aspects  of  things,  and  fix  evanescent 
hues  of  feeling.  This  takes  something  of  the  poetic  fac- 
ulty. Each  man  is  strong  in  that  he  is  trained  in,  weak 
in  other  regions — so  much  so  that  often  the  objects  there 
seem  to  him  non-existent. 

Now  the  scientific  mind  and  the  logical  mind,  when 
turned  toward  the  supersensible  world,  are  apt  to  find  the 
same  difficulty,  only  in  a  much  greater  degree,  as  they  find 
in  dealing  with  objects  of  imagination,  or  with  pure  emo- 
tions. Whoever  has  tried  to  think  steadily  at  all  on  re- 
ligious subjects  must  be  aware  of  this  difficulty.  When 
we  look  upward,  and  try  to  think  of  God  and  of  the  soul's 
relation  to  him,  we  are  apt  to  feel  as  if  we  had  stepped 
out  into  a  world  in  which  the  understanding  finds  little 
or  no  firm  footing.  We  can  not  present  to  ourselves  these 
truths  adequately,  and  as  they  really  are.  Therefore  we 
are  under  the  necessity  of  "  substituting  anthropomorphic 
conceptions,  determined  by  accidents  of  place  and  time, 
to  speak  of  God  as  dwelling  above,  to  attribute  a  before 
and  an  after  to  the  Divine  thought."  With  these  feeble 
adumbrations,  which  are  the  nearest  approaches  to  the 
reality  we  can  make,  the  devout  mind  is  content,  feeling 
them  to  be  full  of  meaning.  But  the  scientific  and  the 
logical  mind  often  feels  great  difficulty  in  being  content 
with  these.  It  craves  more  exactness  of  outline,  and  is 
tempted  to  reject  as  non-existent  things  which  it  can  not 
subject  to  the  laws  of  thought  to  which  it  is  accustomed 
— in  fact,  to  limit  the  orb  of  belief  to  the  orb  of  exact 
knowledge.  Mere  adumbrations  of  spiritual  realities  are 
an  offence  to  the  mind  that  will  accept  only  scientific  ex- 
actness. The  falsity  of  this  way  of  reasoning  has  been  well 
exposed  by  Coleridge,  where  he  protests  against  "  the  ap- 
plication of  deductive  and  conclusive  logic  to  subjects 
concerning  which  the  premises  are  expressed  in  not 
merely  inadequate  but  accommodated  terms.  But  to  con- 
clude terms  proper  and  adequate  from  quasific  and  mendi- 
cant premises  is  illogical  logic  with  a  vengeance.  Water 
can  not  rise  higher  than  its  source,  neither  can  human 
reasoning." 

The  fact  is,  those  root-truths,  on  which  the  founda- 
tions of  our  being  rest,  are  apprehended  not  logically  at 


HINDRANCES  TO   SPIRITUAL   GROWTH  387 

all,  but  mystically.  This  faculty  of  spiritual  apprehen- 
sion, which  is  a  very  different  one  from  those  which  are 
trained  in  schools  and  colleges,  must  be  educated  and 
fed,  not  less  but  more  carefully  than  our  lower  facul- 
ties, else  it  will  be  starved  and  die,  however  learned  or 
able  in  other  respects  we  may  become.  And  the  means 
which  train  it  are  reverent  thought,  meditation,  prayer, 
and  all  those  other  means  by  which  the  divine  life 
is  fed. 

But  because  the  primary  truths  of  religion  refuse  to  be 
caught  in  the  grip  of  the  logical  vice — because  they  are, 
as  I  said,  transcendent,  and  only  mystically  apprehended — 
are  thinking  men  therefore  either  to  give  up  these  objects 
as  impossible  to  think  about,  or  to  content  themselves 
with  a  vague  religiosity,  and  unreal  sentimentalism?  Not 
so.  There  are  certain  veritable  facts  of  consciousness  to 
which  religion  makes  its  appeal.  These  the  thinking  man 
must  endeavour  to  apprehend  with  as  much  definiteness 
as  their  nature  admits  of — must  verify  them  by  his  own 
inward  experience,  and  by  the  recorded  experience  of  the 
most  religious  men.  And  there  are  other  facts  outside  of 
our  consciousness  and  above  it,  which  are  revealed  that 
they  may  fit  into  and  be  taken  up  by  those  needs  of  which 
we  are  conscious.  Rightly  to  apprehend  them,  so  that 
we  shall  make  them  our  own  inwardly,  so  that  they  shall 
supplement,  deepen,  and  expand  our  moral  perceptions, 
not  contradict  and  traverse  them,  this  is  no  easy  work.  It 
is  the  work  of  the  reflective  side  of  the  religious  life.  But 
when  all  is  done,  it  will  still  remain,  that  in  the  whole 
process  intellect  or  the  mere  understanding  is  but  a  sub- 
ordinate agent,  and  must  be  kept  so.  The  primary  agent, 
on  our  side,  is  that  power  of  spiritual  apprehension  which 
we  know  under  many  names,  none  perhaps  better  than 
those  old  ones,  "  the  hearing  ear,  the  understanding 
heart."  The  main  condition  is  that  the  spiritual  ear  should 
be  open  to  overhear  and  patiently  take  in,  and  the  will 
ready  to  obey,  that  testimony  which,  I  believe,  God  bears 
in  every  human  heart,  however  dull,  to  those  great  truths 
which  the  Bible  reveals.  This,  and  not  logic,  is  the  way 
to  grow  in  religious  knowledge,  to  know  that  the  truths 
of  religion  are  not  shadows,  but  deep  realities. 


388 


SHAIRP 


Akin  to  the  desire  for  exact  conceptions  is  the  desire 
for  system.  The  longing  to  systematize,  to  form  a  com- 
pletely rounded  theory  of  the  universe,  which  shall  em- 
brace all  known  facts,  and  assign  to  each  its  proper  place, 
this  craving  lies  deep  in  the  intellectual  man.  It  is  at  the 
root  of  science  and  of  philosophy  in  its  widest  sense;  out 
of  it  has  arisen  the  whole  fabric  of  exact  and  scientific 
knowledge.  But  this,  like  other  good  tendencies,  may  be 
overdone,  and  become  rash  and  one-sided.  From  this  im- 
pulse, too  hastily  carried  out,  arise  such  theories  of  life  as 
that  of  Professor  Huxley,  which  was  discussed  in  a  former 
lecture.  It  is  this  that  gives  to  positivism  the  charm  it  has 
for  many  energetic  minds.  It  seems  such  gain  to  reach 
a  comprehensive,  all-embracing  point  of  view  from  which 
all  knowledge  shall  be  seen  mapped  out,  every  object  and 
science  falling  into  its  proper  place,  and  all  uncertainty, 
all  cloudy  horizons,  rigorously  shut  out.  To  many  minds, 
nothing  seems  too  great  a  price  to  pay  for  this.  And  to 
secure  it  they  have  to  pay  a  great  price.  They  have  to 
cut  off  unsparingly  all  the  ragged  rims  of  knowledge,  to 
exclude  from  view  the  whole  borderland  between  the 
definitely  conceived  and  the  dimly  apprehended,  the  very 
region  in  which  the  main  difficulties  of  thought  peculiarly 
lie.  They  have  to  shut  their  eyes  to  all  those  phenomena, 
often  the  most  interesting,  which  they  can  not  locate.  But 
though  such  systematizers  exclude  them  from  their  sys- 
tem, they  can  not  exclude  them  from  reality.  There  they 
remain  rooted  all  the  same,  whether  we  recognise  them 
or  not.  Shut  them  out  as  you  may,  they  will,  in  spite  of 
all  theories,  reappear,  cropping  out  in  human  history  and 
in  human  consciousness.  Now  it  so  happens  that  of  these 
facts  which  refuse  to  be  systematized,  a  large  part,  but  by 
no  means  all,  arise  out  of  man's  religious  nature.  The 
existence  of  evil,  manifesting  itself  in  man's  consciousness 
as  the  sense  of  sin,  or  estrangement  from  God,  recovery 
from  this,  not  by  any  power  evolved  from  man's  own  re- 
sources, but  by  a  power  which  descended  from  above, 
when^ "  heaven  opened  itself  anew  to  man's  long-alienated 
race  " — these,  and  all  the  facts  they  imply,  are,  and  always 
have  been,  a  stumbling-block  to  those  who  are  bent  on 
a  rounded  system.  Hence  every  age,  and  this  age  pre- 


HINDRANCES   TO   SPIRITUAL   GROWTH  389 

eminently,  has  seen  attempts  to  resolve  Christianity  into  a 
natural  product.  Because  it  enters  into  all  things  human, 
and  moulds  them  to  itself,  the  attempt  is  made  to  account 
for  it  by  the  joint  action  of  those  spiritual  elements  which 
pre-existed  in  human  nature.  Such  attempts  Christianity 
has  for  eighteen  centuries  withstood,  and  will  withstand 
till  the  end.  The  idea  of  a  power  coming  down  from  a 
higher  sphere  to  work  in  and  renew  the  natural  forces  of 
humanity  must  always  be  repugnant  to  any  mode  of 
thought  which  makes  a  complete  system  the  first  neces- 
fcsity.  No  doubt  the  craving  for  a  system  is  a  deep  instinct 
•  of  the  purely  intellectual  man,  but  it  is  a  very  different 
(thing  from  the  craving  for  Tightness  with  God,  which  is 
Tithe  prime  instinct  of  the  spiritual  man.  When  once 
awakened,  the  spiritual  faculty  for  outgoes  all  systems,  sci- 
entific, philosophic,  or  theological,  and  apprehends  and 
Ives  by  truths  which  these  can  not  reduce  to  system. 

Again,  there  is  another  way  in  which  thought  seems 
often  to  get  caught  in  its  own  meshes,  and  so  fall  short 
of  the  highest  truth.  There  is  a  tendency,  not  peculiar  to 
the  present  day,  though  very  prevalent  now,  to  rest  in 
law,  whether  in  the  natural  or  moral  world,  and  to  shrink 
from  going  beyond  it  up  to  God.  There  are  those  who 
think  that  when  science  has  ascended  to  the  most  gen- 
eral uniformities  of  sequence  and  coexistence,  then  knowl- 
edge has  reached  its  limit,  and  all  beyond  is  mere  conjec- 
ture. To  this  I  will  not  reply,  in  the  old  phrase,  about  a 
law  and  a  lawgiver,  for  this  to  some  seems  a  play  on 
words.  But  one  thing,  often  said  before,  must  be  re- 
peated. This  supposed  necessity  to  rest  in  the  perception 
of  ordered  phenomena  is  no  necessity  at  all,  but  an  arti- 
ficial and  arbitrarily  imposed  limitation,  against  which 
thought  left  to  its  natural  action  rebels.  It  is  impossible 
for  any  reflective  mind,  not  dominated  by  a  system,  to 
regard  the  ordered  array  of  physical  forces,  and  to  rest 
|  satisfied  with  this  order,  without  going  on  to  ask  whence 
it  came,  what  placed  it  there.  Thought  can  not  be  kept 
back,  when  it  sees  arrangement,  from  asking  what  is  the 
arranging  power;  when  it  sees  existence,  from  inquiry  how 
it  came  to  exist.  And  the  question  is  a  natural  and  legiti- 
25 


SHAIRP 

mate  one,  in  spite  of  all  that  phenomenalism  may  say 
against  it,  and  it  will  not  cease  to  be  asked  while  there  are 
reasoning  men  to  ask  it. 

The  same  habit  of  mind  is  fain,  in  moral  subjects,  to 
rest  in  moral  law.  But,  if  we  look  closely  at  reality,  what 
are  moral  law,  moral  order,  but  abstractions  generalized 
from  facts  felt  and  observed  by  all  men?  They  are  not 
self-subsisting  entities,  such  as  our  own  personality  is. 
And  a  living  will  would  be  justified  in  refusing  allegiance 
to  a  mere  abstraction,  however  high  or  seemingly  im- 
perative, if  there  was  nothing  behind  it.  It  is  because 
moral  law  is  but  a  condensed  expression  for  the  energy 
of,  shall  I  say,  a  higher  personality,  or  something  greater, 
more  living,  more  all-encompassing,  than  personality,  that 
it  comes  home  to  us  with  the  power  it  does. 

These  are  but  a  few  of  the  more  obvious  ways  in  which 
our  intellectual  habits  may,  and  often  do,  become  a  hin- 
drance instead  of  a  help  toward  spiritual  progress.  There 
are  many  other  ways,  more  subtle  and  hard  to  deal  with, 
some  of  which  I  had  intended  to  notice.  But  for  to-day 
you  have  probably  had  enough  of  abstractions.  And 
what  remains  of  our  time  must  be  given  to  more  prac- 
tical considerations. 

Religious  men  are  always  trying  to  set  forth  in  defence 
of  their  faith  demonstrations  which  shall  be  irrefragable. 
This  is  natural,  nor  do  I  say  that  it  is  altogether  unwise. 
For  as  facts  and  doctrines  form  the  intellectual  outworks  of 
faith,  historical  criticism  must  make  good  the  one,  sound 
philosophy  must  so  far  warrant  the  other.  But  when  all 
that  argument  can  do  has  been  done,  it  still  remains  true 
that  the  best  and  most  convincing  grounds  of  faith  will 
still  remain  behind  unshaped  into  argument.  There  is  a 
great  reserve  fund  of  conviction  arising  from  the  increased 
experience  which  Christian  men  have  of  the  truth  of  what 
they  believe.  And  this  can  not  be  beat  out  into  syllo- 
gisms. It  is  something  too  inward,  too  personal,  too  mys- 
tical, to  be  set  forth  so.  It  is  not  on  that  account  the 
less  real  and  powerful.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  once 
felt  it  is  the  most  self-evidencing  of  all  proofs.  This  is 
what  Coleridge  said:  "  If  you  wish  to  be  assured  of  the 
truth  of  Christianity,  try  it."  "  Believe,  and  if  thy  belief 


HINDRANCES   TO   SPIRITUAL   GROWTH  391 

be  right,  that  insight  which  gradually  transmutes  faith  into 
knowledge  will  be  the  reward  of  thy  belief."  To  be 
vitally  convinced  of  the  truth  of  "  the  process  of  renewal 
described  by  Scripture,  a  man  must  put  himself  within  that 
process."  His  own  experience  of  its  truth,  and  the  con- 
fident assurances  of  others,  whom,  if  candid,  he  will  feel 
to  be  better  than  himself,  will  be  the  most  sufficing  evi- 
dence. But  this  is  an  evidence  which,  while  it  satisfies  a 
man's  self,  can  not  be  brought  to  bear  on  those  who  stand 
without  the  pale,  and  deny  those  things  of  which  they  have 
not  themselves  experience. 

Many  are  apt  to  imagine  that  a  hard  head  and  a  blame- 
less deportment  make  a  man  free  of  the  inner  shrine  of 
Christian  truth.  When  a  scholar  goes  forth  from  college 
well  equipped  with  the  newest  methods,  he  sometimes 
fancies  that  he  holds  the  key  to  which  all  the  secrets  of  faith 
must  open.  And  if  they  do  not  at  once  yield  to  his  men- 
tal efforts,  he  is  tempted  to  regard  them  as  untrue.  But 
clear  and  trained  intellect  is  one  thing,  spiritual  discern- 
ment quite  another.  The  former  does  not  exclude,  but 
neither  does  it  necessarily  include,  the  latter.  They  are 
energies  of  two  different  sides  of  our  being.  Unless  the 
spiritual  nature  in  a  man  is  alive  and  active,  it  is  in  vain 
that  he  works  at  religious  truth  merely  from  the  intellect- 
ual side.  If  he  is  not  awake  in  a  deeper  region  than  his 
intellectual,  though  he  may  be  an  able  critic  or  dialectician, 
a  vital  theologian  or  a  religious  man  he  can  not  be.  Not 
long  ago  I  read  this  remark  of  the  German  theologian 
Rothe:  "  It  is  only  the  pious  subject  that  can  speculate 
theologically.  And  why?  Because  it  is  he  alone  who  has 
the  original  datum,  in  virtue  of  communion  with  God  on 
which  the  dialectic  lays  hold.  So  soon  as  the  original 
datum  is  there,  everything  else  becomes  simply  a  matter 
of  logic."  Or  as  a  thoughtful  English  scholar  and  divine 
lately  expressed  it:  "  Of  all  qualities  which  a  theologian 
must  possess,  a  devotional  spirit  is  the  chief.  For  the  soul 
is  larger  than  the  mind,  and  the  religious  emotions  lay 
hold  on  the  truths  to  which  they  are  related  on  many 
sides  at  once.  A  powerful  understanding,  on  the  other 
hand,  seizes  on  single  points,  and  however  enlarged  in  its 
own  sphere,  is  of  itself  never  safe  from  narrowness  of  view. 


SHAIRP 

For  its  very  office  is  to  analyze,  which  implies  that  thought 
is  fixed  down  to  particular  relations  of  the  subject.  No 
mental  conception,  still  more  no  expression  in  words,  can 
give  the  full  significance  of  any  fact,  least  of  all  of  a  divine 
fact.  Hence  it  is  that  mere  reasoning  is  found  such  an 
ineffectual  measure  against  simple  piety,  and  devotion  is 
such  a  safeguard  against  intellectual  errors."  Yes,  "  the 
original  datum,"  that  is  the  main  thing.  And  what  is  this 
but  that  which  our  old  Puritan  forefathers  meant  when 
they  spoke  of  a  man  "  having  the  root  of  the  matter  in 
him  "?  The  devout  spirit  is  not  fed  by  purely  intellectual 
processes;  sometimes  it  is  even  frustrated  by  them.  The 
hard  brain-work  and  the  seclusion  of  the  student  tend,  if 
uncounteracted,  to  dry  up  the  springs  alike  of  the  human 
sympathies  and  of  the  heavenward  emotions.  It  was  a 
saying  of  Dr.  Arnold,  certainly  no  disparager  of  intellect, 
that  no  student  could  continue  long  in  a  healthy  religious 
state  unless  his  heart  was  kept  tender  by  mingling  with 
children,  or  by  frequent  intercourse  with  the  poor  and  the 
suffering. 

And  this  suggests  a  subject  which  might  occupy  a 
whole  lecture  or  course  of  lectures,  to  which,  however, 
now  only  a  few  words  can  be  given.  It  is  one  main 
object  of  all  our  education  here  to  train  the  critical  faculty. 
This  faculty,  educated  by  scholarship,  has  an  important 
function  to  fill  in  matters  bearing  on  religion.  With  re- 
gard to  these  it  has  a  work  to  do  which  ought  not  to  be 
disregarded,  and  that  work  it  is  at  present  doing  actively 
enough.  To  weigh  evidence,  and  form  a  sound  judgment 
whether  alleged  facts  are  really  true,  whether  documents 
really  belong  to  the  age  and  the  authors  they  profess  to  be 
of;  by  trained  historical  imagination  to  enter  into  the 
whole  circumstances  and  meaning  of  any  past  age;  to 
examine  the  meaning  of  the  sacred  Scriptures,  and  see 
"  how  far  its  modes  and  figures  of  representation  are 
merely  vehicles  of  inner  truth,  or  are  of  the  essence  of  the 
truth  itself;  to  understand  the  human  conditions  of  the 
writers,  and  appreciate  how  far  these  may  have  influenced 
their  statements;  to  give  to  past  theological  language  its 
proper  weight  and  not  more  than  its  proper  weight;  to 
trace  the  history  of  its  terms  so  as  not  to  confound 


HINDRANCES   TO   SPIRITUAL   GROWTH  393 

human  thought  with  divine  faith  " — all  these  processes 
are  essential  to  the  theologian — some  measure  of  them 
is  required  in  every  educated  man  who  will  think  rightly 
on  such  subjects.  I  would  not  underrate  the  value  of 
this  kind  of  work.  It  is  necessary  in  the  educated,  if 
well-grounded  religion  is  to  live  among  the  people,  and 
faith  is  not  to  be  wholly  dissevered  from  intellectual  truth. 
At  the  same  time  it  is  carried  on  in  the  outworks  rather 
than  in  the  citadel,  it  deals  with  the  shells  rather  than  with 
the  kernel  of  divine  things.  This  vocation  of  the  critic, 
however  useful  for  others,  has  dangers  for  himself.  There 
is  a  risk  that  criticism  shall  absorb  his  whole  being.  This 
is  no  imaginary  danger.  We  are  not  called  on  to  believe 
this  or  that  doctrine  which  may  be  proposed  to  us  till  we 
can  do  so  from  honest  conviction.  But  we  are  called  on 
to  trust,  to  trust  ourselves  to  God,  being  sure  that  he 
will  lead  us  right,  to  keep  close  to  him,  and  to  trust  the 
romises  which  he  whispers  through  our  conscience;  this 
e  can  do,  and  we  ought  to  do.  Every  scholar  who  is 
Iso  a  religious  man  must  have  felt  it,  must  be  aware  how 
apt  he  is  to  approach  the  simplest  spiritual  truths  as  a 
critic,  not  as  a  simple  learner.  And  yet  he  feels  that  when 
all  is  said  and  done,  it  is  trust,  not  criticism,  that  the  soul 
lives  by.  If  he  is  ever  to  get  beyond  the  mere  outer  pre- 
cinct and  pass  within  the  holy  place,  he  must  put  off  his 
critical  apparatus,  and  enter  as  a  simple  contrite-hearted 
man.  Not  as  men  of  science,  not  as  critics,  not  as 
philosophers,  but  as  little  children,  shall  we  enter  into 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.  "  Therefore,"  says  Leighton, 
speaking  of  filial  prayer,  "  many  a  poor  unlettered 
Christian  far  outstrips  your  school  rabbis  in  this  attain- 
ment, because  it  is  not  effectually  taught  in  these  lower 
academies." 

These  are  reflections  needed  perhaps  at  all  times  by 
those  immersed  in  thought  and  study,  never  more  needed 
than  now.  Numberless  voices,  through  newspaper,  pam- 
phlet, periodical,  from  platform  and  pulpit,  are  telling  us 
that  we  are  in  the  midst  of  a  transition  age,  so  loudly  that 
the  dullest  can  not  choose  but  hear.  It  is  a  busy,  restless 
time,  eager  to  cast  off  the  old  and  reach  forward  to  the 
new.  It  needs  no  diviner  to  tell  us  that  this  century  will 


394  SHAIRP 

not  pass  without  a  great  breaking  up  of  the  dogmatic 
structures  that  have  held  ever  since  the  Reformation  or 
the  succeeding  age.  From  many  sides  at  once  a  simplify- 
ing of  the  code,  a  revision  of  the  standards,  is  being  de- 
manded. I  will  not  ask  whether  this  is  good  or  bad,  de- 
sirable or  not.  It  is  enough  that  it  is  inevitable.  From 
such  a  removal  of  old  landmarks  two  opposite  results  may 
arise.  Either  it  may  make  faith  easier  by  taking  cumbrous 
forms  out  of  the  way — it  may  make  the  direct  approach  to 
Christ  and  God  simple  and  more  natural,  may,  in  fact, 
bring  God  nearer  to  the  souls  of  men — or  it  may  remove 
him  to  a  greater  distance,  and  make  life  more  completely 
secular.  Which  shall  the  result  be?  This  depends  for 
each  of  us  on  the  way  we  use  the  new  state  of  things,  on 
the  preparedness  or  non-preparedness  of  heart  with  which 
we  meet  it.  Often  it  is  seen  that  great  changes,  which  in 
the  long  run  turn  to  the  good  of  the  community,  bring 
suffering  and  grievous  loss  on  their  way  to  many  an  in- 
dividual. And  a  time  of  transition,  when  the  old  bonds 
are  being  broken  up,  is  a  time  of  trial  to  the  spirits  of 
men.  At  such  a  time,  in  anxiety  but  not  in  despair,  we 
ask,  How  is  the  old  piety  to  live  on  through  all  changes 
into  the  new  world  that  is  to  be?  If  the  outward  frame- 
work that  helped  to  strengthen  our  fathers  is  being  re- 
moved, the  more  the  need  that  we  should  cleave  to  the 
inward,  the  vital,  the  spiritual  communion  with  Him  on 
whom  the  soul  lives.  Secular  and  worldly  common  sense 
will  discuss  in  newspapers,  literary  criticism  in  magazines, 
these  momentous  changes;  but  such  talk  touches  only  the 
outside  aspect  of  them,  and  can  not  discern  what  is  essen- 
tial or  what  is  not.  Even  refined  intellectuality  can  not 
much  help  us  here.  That  which  passes  safely  through  all 
changes  is  the  tender  conscience,  the  trusting  heart,  the 
devout  mind.  Let  us  seek  these,  and  the  disciplines  which 
strengthen  them.  College  learning  is  good,  but  not  all 
the  learning  of  all  the  universities  of  Europe  can  com- 
pensate for  the  loss  of  that  which  the  youth  reared  in  a 
religious  home  has  learned  in  childhood  at  his  mother's 
knee. 

In  all  the  best  men  you  meet,  perhaps  the  thing  that  is 
most  peculiar  about  them  is  the  child's  heart  they  bear 


HINDRANCES   TO   SPIRITUAL   GROWTH  395 

within  the  man's.  However  they  have  differed  in  other 
respects,  in  their  tempers,  gifts,  attainments,  in  this  they 
agreed.  With  those  things  they  were,  so  to  speak,  clothed 
upon — this  was  their  very  core,  their  essential  self.  And 
this  child's  heart  it  is  that  is  the  organ  of  faith,  trust, 
heavenly  communion.  It  is  a  very  simple  thing — so  simple 
that  worldly  men  are  apt  either  not  to  perceive  or  to 
despise  it.  And  young  persons,  when  they  first  grow  up 
and  enter  the  world,  are  tempted  to  make  little  of  it.  They 
think  that  now  they  are  men  they  must  put  away  childish 
things,  must  learn  the  world,  and  conform  to  its  ways  and 
estimates  of  things. 

But  the  ra  TOV  vTjTrtov,  the  childish  things,  which  St. 
Paul  put  away,  belong  to  a  quite  different  side  of  child- 
nature  from  the  Tra&Lov,  the  little  child  which  our  Lord 
recommended  for  our  example. 

We  should  try,  as  we  grow  up  into  manhood,  and  get 
to  know  the  world,  to  have  this  simplicity  of  childhood 
kept  fresh  within  us,  still  at  the  centre.  If  we  allow  the 
world  to  rob  us  of  it,  as  so  many  do,  in  boyhood,  even 
before  manhood  begins,  we  may  be  sure  that  the  world 
has  nothing  equal  .to  it  to  give  us  instead.  And  they  who 
may  have  for  a  time  lost  it,  or  had  it  obscured  or  put 
into  abeyance  by  contact  with  men,  can  not  too  soon  seek 
to  have  it  restored  within  them.  And  the  only  way  to  pre- 
serve this  good  thing,  or  have  it,  if  lost,  renewed,  is  to 
open  the  heart  to  simple,  truthful  communion  with  God 
and  Christ,  and  try  to  bring  the  heart  ever  closer  and  closer 
to  him. 

That  this  is  intended  to  be  our  very  inmost  nature,  the 
way  in  which  we  are  reared  by  Providence  seems  to  show. 
For  all  the  first  years  of  our  life  he  surrounds  us  with 
the  warm  charities  of  home;  by  these  he  calls  out  all  our 
earliest,  deepest,  most  permanent  feelings.  School,  col- 
lege, the  world  follow,  but  their  influences,  great  as  they 
are,  never  penetrate  down,  at  least  in  natural  characters,  so 
deep  as  those  first  affections.  And  then  in  mature  life, 
the  home  of  childhood  is  generally,  if  possible,  reproduced, 
in  a  home  of  our  own,  in  which  all  the  early  affections 
are  once  more  renewed,  enhanced  by  the  thoughtfulness 
that  life  has  brought. 


396 


SHAIRP 


Let  me  close  with  reading  what  Pascal  has  left  as  his 
Profession  of  Faith : 

"  I  love  poverty,  because  Jesus  Christ  loved  it.  I  love 
wealth,  because  it  gives  me  the  means  of  assisting  the 
wretched.  I  keep  faith  with  all  men.  I  do  not  render 
evil  to  those  who  do  it  to  me;  but  I  desire  a  state  for  them 
like  to  my  own,  in  which  I  receive  neither  evil  nor  good 
from  the  hand  of  man.  I  endeavour  to  be  just,  truthful, 
sincere,  and  faithful  to  all  men,  and  I  have  a  tenderness 
of  heart  for  those  to  whom  God  has  united  me  more 
closely;  and  whether  I  am  alone,  or  in  the  sight  of  men, 
in  all  my  actions  I  have  in  sight  God,  who  must  judge 
them,  and  to  wh'om  I  have  consecrated  them  all. 

'  These  are  my  sentiments,  and  I  bless  all  the  days  of 
my  life  my  Redeemer,  who  has  put  them  into  me,  and 
who,  from  a  man  full  of  weakness,  misery,  concupiscence, 
pride,  and  ambition,  has  made  a  man  exempt  from  all 
these  evils  by  the  strength  of  his  grace,  to  which  all  the 
glory  of  it  is  due,  since  I  have  in  myself  nothing  but 
misery  and  error." 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT 

BY 

MATTHEW   ARNOLD 


26 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  was  born  in  Laleham,  England,  December  24,  1822. 
He  was  the  oldest  son  of  the  famous  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold,  Head  Master 
of  Rugby,  and  was  educated  there  and  at  Oxford,  where  he  won  a  prize 
for  a  poem  on  Cromwell,  and  was  made  a  fellow.  He  was  private  secre- 
tary to  Lord  Lansdowne  several  years,  and  in  1857  was  elected  Professor 
of  Poetry  at  Oxford.  He  was  sent  by  the  British  Government  to  observe 
the  educational  systems  on  the  Continent,  and  his  reports  attracted  wide 
attention.  He  lectured  in  the  United  States  in  1883.  He  was  a  volumi- 
nous writer.  While  his  poetry  is  neither  very  deep  nor  very  spirited,  it 
has  its  admirers  among  persons  of  taste  and  scholarship.  Sometimes  he 
is  demonstrably  wide  of  the  mark  in  his  criticisms — as  on  Emerson,  for 
instance — but  his  essays  generally  are  ranked  high.  The  most  famous 
of  them  is  that  which  follows,  the  title  of  which  is  from  Dean  Swift.  His 
essays  and  poems  are  published  in  a  uniform  edition  in  twelve  volumes, 
and  his  letters  in  three  additional  volumes.  He  died  April  15,  1888. 


SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT 

IN  one  of  his  speeches  a  short  time  ago,  that  fine 
speaker  and  famous  Liberal,  Mr.  Bright,  took  occasion 
to  have  a  fling  at  the  friends  and  preachers  of  culture. 
"  People  who  talk  about  what  they  call  culture!  "  said  he, 
contemptuously,  "  by  which  they  mean  a  smattering  of 
the  two  dead  languages  of  Greek  and  Latin."  And  he  went 
on  to  remark,  in  a  strain  with  which  modern  speakers  and 
writers  have  made  us  very  familiar,  how  poor  a  thing  this 
culture  is,  how  little  good  it  can  do  to  the  world,  and  how 
absurd  it  is  for  its  possessors  to  set  much  store  by  it.  And 
the  other  day  a  younger  Liberal  than  Mr.  Bright,  one  of 
a  school  whose  mission  it  is  to  bring  into  order  and  sys- 
tem that  body  of  truth  with  which  the  earlier  Liberals 
merely  fumbled,  a  member  of  the  University  of  Oxford, 
and  a  very  clever  writer,  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  devel- 
oped, in  the  sytematic  and  stringent  manner  of  his  school, 
the  thesis  which  Mr.  Bright  had  propounded  in  only  gen- 
eral terms.  "  Perhaps  the  very  silliest  cant  of  the  day," 
said  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  "  is  the  cant  about  culture. 
Culture  is  a  desirable  quality  in  a  critic  of  new  books,  and 
sits  wrell  on  a  professor  of  belles-lettres;  but  as  applied  to 
politics  it  means  simply  a  turn  for  small  fault-finding, 
love  of  selfish  ease,  and  indecision  in  action.  The  man  of 
culture  is  in  politics  one  of  the  poorest  mortals  alive.  For 
simple  pedantry  and  want  of  good  sense  no  man  is  his 
equal.  No  assumption  is  too  unreal,  no  end  is  too  un- 
practical for  him.  But  the  active  exercise  of  politics  re- 
quires common  sense,  sympathy,  trust,  resolution,  and  en- 
thusiasm, qualities  which  your  man  of  culture  has  carefully 
rooted  up,  lest  they  damage  the  delicacy  of  his  critical 
olfactories.  Perhaps  they  are  the  only  class  of  responsible 
beings  in  the  community  who  caa  not  with  safety  be  in- 
trusted with  power." 

399 


400  ARNOLD 

Now,  for  my  part,  I  do  not  wish  to  see  men  of  culture 
asking  to  be  intrusted  with  power;  and,  indeed,  I  have 
freely  said  that  in  my  opinion  the  speech  most  proper,  at 
present,  for  a  man  of  culture  to  make  to  a  body  of  his 
fellow-countrymen  who  get  him  into  a  committee-room, 
is  Socrates's  "  Know  thyself!  "  and  this  is  not  a  speech  to 
be  made  by  men  wanting  to  be  intrusted  with  power. 
For  this  very  indifference  to  direct  political  action  I  have 
been  taken  to  task  by  the  "  Daily  Telegraph,"  coupled, 
by  a  strange  perversity  of  fate,  with  just  that  very  one 
of  the  Hebrew  prophets  whose  style  I  admire  the  least, 
and  called  "  an  elegant  Jeremiah."  It  is  because  I  say 
(to  use  the  words  which  the  "  Daily  Telegraph  "  puts  in 
my  mouth):  "  You  mustn't  make  a  fuss  because  you  have 
no  vote — that  is  vulgarity;  you  mustn't  hold  big  meetings 
to  agitate  for  reform  bills  and  to  repeal  corn  laws;  that  is 
the  very  height  of  vulgarity  ";  it  is  for  this  reason  that  I 
am  called  sometimes  an  elegant  Jeremiah,  sometimes  a 
spurious  Jeremiah,  a  Jeremiah  about  the  reality  of  whose 
mission  the  writer  in  the  "  Daily  Telegraph "  has  his 
doubts.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  I  have  so  taken  my 
line  as  not  to  be  exposed  to  the  whole  brunt  of  Mr.  Fred- 
eric Harrison's  censure.  Still,  I  have  often  spoken  in 
praise  of  culture;  I  have  striven  to  make  all  my  works 
and  ways  serve  the  interests  of  culture.  I  take  culture 
to  be  something  a  great  deal  more  than  what  Mr.  Fred- 
eric Harrison  and  others  call  it,  "  a  desirable  quality  in  a 
critic  of  new  books."  Nay,  even  though  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent I  am  disposed  to  agree  with  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison, 
that  men  of  culture  are  just  the  class  of  responsible  beings 
in  this  community  of  ours  who  can  not  properly,  at  pres- 
ent, be  intrusted  with  power,  I  am  not  sure  that  I  do  not 
think  this  the  fault  of  our  community  rather  than  of  the 
men  of  culture.  In  short,  although  like  Mr.  Bright,  and 
Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  and  the  editor  of  the  "  Daily  Tele- 
graph," and  a  large  body  of  valued  friends  of  mine,  I  am 
a  Liberal,  yet  I  am  a  Liberal  tempered  by  experience,  re- 
flection, and  renouncement,  and  I  am,  above  all,  a  believer 
in  culture.  Therefore  I  propose  now  to  try  and  inquire, 
in  the  simple  unsystematic  way  which  best  suits  both  my 
taste  and  my  powers,  what  culture  really  is,  what  good  it 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT  401 

can  do,  what  is  our  own  special  need  of  it;  and  I  shall  seek 
to  find  some  plain  grounds  on  which  a  faith  in  culture — 
both  my  own  faith  in  it  and  the  faith  of  others — may  rest 
securely. 

The  disparagers  of  culture  make  its  motive  curiosity; 
sometimes,  indeed,  they  make  its  motive  mere  exclusive- 
ness  and  vanity.  The  culture  which  is  supposed  to  plume 
itself  on  a  smattering  of  Greek  and  Latin  is  a  culture  which 
is  begotten  by  nothing  so  intellectual  as  curiosity;  it  is 
valued  either  out  of  sheer  vanity  and  ignorance,  or  else  as 
an  engine  of  social  and  class  distinction,  separating  its 
holder,  like  a  badge  or  title,  from  other  people  who  have 
not  got  it.  No  serious  man  would  call  this  culture,  or 
attach  any  value  to  it  as  culture  at  all.  To  find  the  real 
ground  for  the  very  different  estimate  which  serious  peo- 
ple will  set  upon  culture,  we  must  find  some  motive  for 
culture  in  the  terms  of  which  may  lie  a  real  ambiguity; 
and  such  a  motive  the  word  curiosity  gives  us. 

I  have  before  now  pointed  out  that  we  English  do  not, 
like  the  foreigners,  use  this  word  in  a  good  sense  as  well 
as  in  a  bad  sense.  With  us  the  word  is  always  used  in  a 
somewhat  disapproving  sense.  A  liberal  and  intelligent 
eagerness  about  the  things  of  the  mind  may  be  meant 
by  a  foreigner  when  he  speaks  of  curiosity,  but  with  us 
the  word  always  conveys  a  certain  notion  of  frivolous  and 
unedifying  activity.  In  the  "  Quarterly  Review,"  some 
little  time  ago,  was  an  estimate  of  the  celebrated  French 
critic,  M.  Sainte-Beuve,  and  a  very  inadequate  estimate  it 
in  my  judgment  was.  And  its  inadequacy  consisted 
chiefly  in  this,  that  in  our  English  way  it  left  out  of  sight 
the  double  sense  really  involved  in  the  word  curiosity, 
thinking  enough  was  said  to  stamp  M.  Sainte-Beuve  with 
blame  if  it  was  said  that  he  was  impelled  in  his  operations 
as  a  critic  by  curiosity,  and  omitting  either  to  perceive 
that  M.  Sainte-Beuve  himself,  and  many  other  people  with 
him,  would  consider  that  this  was  praiseworthy  and  not 
blameworthy,  or  to  point  out  why  it  ought  really  to  be 
accounted  worthy  of  blame  and  not  of  praise.  For  as 
there  is  a  curiosity  about  intellectual  matters  which  is 
futile,  and  merely  a  disease,  so  there  is  certainly  a  curiosity 
— a  desire  after  the  things  of  the  mind  simply  for  their 


402  ARNOLD 

own  sakes  and  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  them  as  they 
are;  which  is,  in  an  intelligent  being,  natural  and  laudable. 
Nay,  and  the  very  desire  to  see  things  as  they  are  implies 
a  balance  and  regulation  of  mind  which  is  not  often 
attained  without  fruitful  effort,  and  which  is  the  very  op- 
posite of  the  blind  and  diseased  impulse  of  mind  which  is 
what  we  mean  to  blame  when  we  blame  curiosity.  Mon- 
tesquieu says:  "  The  first  motive  which  ought  to  impel 
us  to  study  is  the  desire  to  augment  the  excellence  of  our 
nature,  and  to  render  an  intelligent  being  yet  more  intel- 
ligent." This  is  the  true  ground  to  assign  for  the  genuine 
scientific  passion,  however  manifested,  and  for  culture, 
viewed  simply  as  a  fruit  of  this  passion;  and  it  is  a  worthy 
ground,  even  though  we  let  the  term  curiosity  stand  to 
describe  it. 

But  there  is  of  culture  another  view,  in  which  not  solely 
the  scientific  passion,  the  sheer  desire  to  see  things  as  they 
are,  natural  and  proper  in  an  intelligent  being,  appears 
as  the  ground  of  it.  There  is  a  view  in  which  all  the  love 
of  our  neighbour,  the  impulses  toward  action,  help,  and 
beneficence,  the  desire  for  removing  human  error,  clearing 
human  confusion,  and  diminishing  human  misery,  the 
noble  aspiration  to  leave  the  world  better  and  happier  than 
we  found  it — motives  eminently  such  as  are  called  social — 
come  in  as  part  of  the  grounds  of  culture,  and  the  main 
and  pre-eminent  part.  Culture  is  then  properly  described 
not  as  having  its  origin  in  curiosity,  but  as  having  its 
origin  in  the  love  of  perfection;  it  is  a  study  of  perfec- 
tion. It  moves  by  the  force,  not  merely  or  primarily  of 
the  scientific  passion  for  pure  knowledge,  but  also  of  the 
moral  and  social  passion  for  doing  good.  As,  in  the  first 
view  of  it,  we  took  for  its  worthy  motto  Montesquieu's 
words,  "  To  render  an  intelligent  being  yet  more  intelli- 
gent! "  so,  in  the  second  view  of  it,  there  is  no  better 
motto  which  it  can  have  than  these  words  of  Bishop 
Wilson:  "To  make  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail!  " 

Only,  whereas  the  passion  for  doing  good  is  apt  to  be 
overhasty  in  determining  what  reason  and  the  will  of  God 
say,  because  its  turn  is  for  acting  rather  than  thinking,  and 
it  wants  to  be  beginning  to  act;  and  whereas  it  is  apt  to 
take  its  own  conceptions,  which  proceed  from  its  own 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT  403 

state  of  development  and  share  in  all  the  imperfections 
and  immaturities  of  this,  for  a  basis  of  action.  What  dis- 
tinguishes culture  is  that  it  is  possessed  by  the  scientific 
passion  as  well  as  by  the  passion  of  doing  good;  that  it 
demands  worthy  notions  of  reason  and  the  will  of  God, 
and  does  not  readily  suffer  its  own  crude  conceptions  to 
substitute  themselves  for  them.  And  knowing  that  no 
action  or  institution  can  be  salutary  and  stable  which  is 
not  based  on  reason  and  the  will  of  God,  it  is  not  so 
bent  on  acting  and  instituting,  even  with  the  great  aim 
of  diminishing  human  error  and  misery  ever  before  its 
thoughts,  but  that  it  can  remember  that  acting  and  insti- 
tuting are  of  little  use  unless  we  know  how  and  what  we 
ought  to  act  and  to  institute. 

This  culture  is  more  interesting  and  more  far-reaching 
than  that  other,  which  is  founded  solely  on  the  scientific 
passion  for  knowing.  But  it  needs  times  of  faith  and 
ardour,  times  when  the  intellectual  horizon  is  opening  and 
widening  all  round  us,  to  flourish  in.  And  is  not  the  close 
and  bounded  intellectual  horizon  within  which  we  have 
long  lived  and  moved  now  lifting  up,  and  are  not  new 
lights  finding  free  passage  to  shine  in  upon  us?  For  a 
long  time  there  was  no  passage  for  them  to  make  their 
way  in  upon  us,  and  then  it  was  of  no  use  to  think  of 
adapting  the  world's  action  to  them.  Where  was  the  hope 
of  making  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail  among  peo- 
ple who  had  a  routine  which  they  had  christened  reason 
and  the  will  of  God,  in  which  they  were  inextricably 
bound,  and  beyond  which  they  had  no  power  of  looking? 
But  now  the  iron  force  of  adhesion  to  the  old  routine — 
social,  political,  religious — has  wonderfully  yielded;  the 
iron  force  of  exclusion  of  all  which  is  new  has  wonderfully 
yielded.  The  danger  now  is  not  that  people  should  ob- 
stinately refuse  to  allow  anything  but  their  old  routine  to 
pass  for  reason  and  the  will  of  God,  but  either  that  they 
should  allow  some  novelty  or  other  to  pass  for  these  too 
easily,  or  else  that  they  should  underrate  the  importance 
of  them  altogether,  and  think  it  enough  to  follow  action 
for  its  own  sake,  without  troubling  themselves  to  make 
reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail  therein.  Now,  then,  is 
the  moment  for  culture  to  be  of  service,  culture  which 


404  ARNOLD 

believes  in  making  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail,  be- 
lieves in  perfection,  is  the  study  and  pursuit  of  perfection, 
and  is  no  longer  debarred  by  a  rigid,  invincible  exclusion 
of  whatever  is  new,  from  getting  acceptance  for  its  ideas, 
simply  because  they  are  new. 

The  moment  this  view  of  culture  is  seized,  the  mo- 
ment it  is  regarded  not  solely  as  the  endeavour  to  see 
things  as  they  are,  to  draw  toward  a  knowledge  of  the 
universal  order  which  seems  to  be  intended  and  aimed  at 
in  the  world,  and  which  it  is  a  man's  happiness  to  go  along 
with  or  his  misery  to  go  counter  to — to  learn,  in  short,  the 
will  of  God — the  moment,  I  say,  culture  is  considered  not 
merely  as  the  endeavour  to  see  and  learn  this,  but  as  the 
endeavour,  also,  to  make  it  prevail,  the  moral,  social,  and 
beneficent  character  of  culture  becomes  manifest.  The 
mere  endeavour  to  see  and  learn  the  truth  for  our  own 
personal  satisfaction  is  indeed  a  commencement  for  mak- 
ing it  prevail,  a  preparing  the  way  for  this,  which  always 
serves  this,  and  is  wrongly,  therefore,  stamped  with  blame 
absolutely  in  itself,  and  not  only  in  its  caricature  and  de- 
generation. But  perhaps  it  has  got  stamped  with  blame, 
and  disparaged  with  the  dubious  title  of  curiosity,  because 
in  comparison  with  this  wider  endeavour  of  such  great  and 
plain  utility  it  looks  selfish,  petty,  and  unprofitable. 

And  religion,  the  greatest  and  most  important  of  the 
efforts  by  which  the  human  race  has  manifested  its  im- 
pulse to  perfect  itself — religion,  that  voice  of  the  deepest 
human  experience — does  not  only  enjoin  and  san'ction  the 
aim  which  is  the  great  aim  of  culture,  the  aim  of  setting 
ourselves  to  ascertain  what  perfection  is  and  to  make  it 
prevail;  but  also,  in  determining  generally  in  what  human 
perfection  consists,  religion  comes  to  a  conclusion  identi- 
cal with  that  which  culture — culture  seeking  the  deter- 
mination of  this  question  through  all  the  voices  of  human 
experience  which  have  been  heard  upon  it,  of  art,  science, 
poetry,  philosophy,  history,  as  well  as  of  religion,  in  order 
to  give  a  greater  fulness  and  certainty  to  its  solution — 
likewise  reaches.  Religion  says:  "  The  kingdom  of  God  is 
within  you";  and  culture,  in  like  manner,  places  human 
perfection  in  an  internal  condition,  in  the  growth  and  pre- 
dominance of  our  humanity  proper,  as  distinguished  from 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT  405 

our  animality.  It  places  it  in  the  ever-increasing  efficacy 
and  in  the  general  harmonious  expansion  of  those  gifts  of 
thought  and  feeling,  which  make  the  peculiar  dignity, 
wealth,  and  happiness  of  human  nature.  As  I  have  said 
on  a  former  occasion:  "  It  is  in  making  endless  additions 
to  self,  in  the  endless  expansion  of  its  powers,  in  endless 
growth  in  wisdom  and  beauty,  that  the  spirit  of  the  human 
race  finds  its  ideal.  To  reach  this  ideal,  culture  is  an  in- 
dispensable aid,  and  that  is  the  true  value  of  culture."  Not 
a  having  and  a  resting,  but  a  growing  and  a  becoming, 
is  the  character  of  perfection  as  culture  conceives  it;  and 
here,  too,  it  coincides  with  religion. 

And  because  men  are  all  members  of  one  great  whole, 
and  the  sympathy  which  is  in  human  nature  will  not  allow 
one  member  to  be  indifferent  to  the  rest  or  to  have  a 
perfect  welfare  independent  of  the  rest,  the  expansion  of 
our  humanity,  to  suit  the  idea  of  perfection  which  culture 
forms,  must  be  a  general  expansion.  Perfection,  as  cul- 
ture conceives  it,  is  not  possible  while  the  individual  re- 
mains isolated.  The  individual  is  required,  under  pain  of 
being  stunted  and  enfeebled  in  his  own  development  if  he 
disobeys,  to  carry  others  along  with  him  in  his  march  to- 
ward perfection,  to  be  continually  doing  all  he  can  to  en- 
large and  increase  the  volume  of  the  human  stream  sweep- 
ing thitherward.  And  here,  once  more,  culture  lays  on 
us  the  same  obligation  as  religion,  which  says,  as  Bishop 
Wilson  has  admirably  put  it,  that  "  to  promote  the  king- 
dom of  God  is  to  increase  and  hasten  one's  own  hap- 
piness." 

But,  finally,  perfection — as  culture  from  a  thoroughly 
disinterested  study  of  human  nature  and  human  experi- 
ence learns  to  conceive  it — is  a  harmonious  expansion  of 
all  the  powers  which  make  the  beauty  and  worth  of  human 
nature,  and  is  not  consistent  with  the  over-development 
of  any  one  power  at  the  expense  of  the  rest.  Here  culture 
goes  beyond  religion,  as  religion  is  generally  conceived 
by  us. 

If  culture,  then,  is  a  study  of  perfection,  and  of  har- 
monious perfection,  general  perfection,  and  perfection 
which  consists  in  becoming  something  rather  than  in  hav- 
ing something,  in  an  inward  condition  of  the  mind  and 


4o6  ARNOLD 

spirit,  not  in  an  outward  set  of  circumstances — it  is  clear 
that  culture,  instead  of  being  the  frivolous  and  useless 
thing  which  Mr.  Bright,  and  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison, 
and  many  other  Liberals  are  apt  to  call  it,  has  a  very 
important  function  to  fulfil  for  mankind.  And  this  func- 
tion is  particularly  important  in  our  modern  world,  of 
which  the  whole  civilization  is,  to  a  much  greater  degree 
than  the  civilization  of  Greece  and  Rome,  mechanical 
and  external,  and  tends  constantly  to  become  more  so. 
But  above  all  in  our  own  country  has  culture  a  weighty 
part  to  perform,  because  here  that  mechanical  character, 
which  civilization  tends  to  take  everywhere,  is  shown 
in  the  most  eminent  degree.  Indeed,  nearly  all  the  char- 
acters of  perfection,  as  culture  teaches  us  to  fix  them, 
meet  in  this  country  with  some  powerful  tendency  which 
thwarts  them  and  sets  them  at  defiance.  The  idea  of  per- 
fection as  an  inward  condition  of  the  mind  and  spirit  is  at 
variance  with  the  mechanical  and  material  civilization  in 
esteem  with  us,  and  nowhere,  as  I  have  said,  so  much  in 
esteem  as  with  us.  The  idea  of  perfection  as  a  general 
expansion  of  the  human  family  is  at  variance  with  our 
strong  individualism,  our  hatred  of  all  limits  to  the  un- 
restrained swing  of  the  individual's  personality,  our  maxim 
of  "  every  man  for  himself."  Above  all,  the  idea  of  per- 
fection as  a  harmonious  expansion  of  human  nature  is  at 
variance  with  our  want  of  flexibility,  with  our  inaptitude 
for  seeing  more  than  one  side  of  a  thing,  with  our  intense 
energetic  absorption  in  the  particular  pursuit  we  happen 
to  be  following.  So  culture  has  a  rough  task  to  achieve 
in  this  country.  Its  preachers  have,  and  are  likely  long  to 
have,  a  hard  time  of  it,  for  they  will  much  oftener  be  re- 
garded, for  a  great  while  to  come,  as  elegant  or  spurious 
Jeremiahs  than  as  friends  and  benefactors.  That,  however, 
will  not  prevent  their  doing  in  the  end  good  service  if  they 
persevere.  And,  meanwhile,  the  mode  of  action  they  have 
to  pursue,  and  the  sort  of  habits  they  must  fight  against, 
ought  to  be  made  quite  clear  for  every  one  to  see,  who 
may  be  willing  to  look  at  the  matter  attentively  and  dis- 
passionately. 

Faith  in  machinery  is,  I  said,  our  besetting  danger; 
often  in  machinery  most  absurdly  disproportioned  to  the 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT  407 

end  which  this  machinery,  if  it  is  to  do  any  good  at  all, 
is  to  serve;  but  always  in  machinery,  as  if  it  had  a  value 
in  and  for  itself.  What  is  freedom  but  machinery?  what 
is  population  but  machinery?  what  is  coal  but  machinery? 
what  are  railroads  but  machinery?  what  is  wealth  but 
machinery?  what  are,  even,  religious  organizations  but 
machinery?  Now  almost  every  voice  in  England  is  accus- 
tomed to  speak  of  these  things  as  if  they  were  precious 
ends  in  themselves,  and  therefore  had  some  of  the  char- 
acters of  perfection  indisputably  joined  to  them.  I  have 
before  now  noticed  Mr.  Roebuck's  stock  argument  for 
proving  the  greatness  and  happiness  of  England  as  she  is, 
and  for  quite  stopping  the  mouths  of  all  gainsayers.  Mr. 
Roebuck  is  never  weary  of  reiterating  this  argument  of 
his,  so  I  do  not  know  why  I  should  be  weary  of  noticing 
it.  "  May  not  every  man  in  England  say  what  he  likes?  " 
Mr.  Roebuck  perpetually  asks;  and  that,  he  thinks,  is 
quite  sufficient,  and  when  every  man  may  say  what  he 
likes,  our  aspirations  ought  to  be  satisfied.  But  the  aspira- 
tions of  culture,  which  is  the  study  of  perfection,  are  not 
satisfied  unless  what  men  say,  when  they  may  say  what 
they  like,  is  worth  saying — has  good  in  it,  and  more  good 
than  bad.  In  the  same  way  the  "  Times,"  replying  to 
some  foreign  strictures  on  the  dress,  looks,  and  behaviour 
of  the  English  abroad,  urges  that  the  English  ideal  is  that 
every  one  should  be  free  to  do  and  look  just  as  he  likes. 
But  culture  indefatigably  tries  not  to  make  what  each  raw 
person  may  like  the  rule  by  which  he  fashions  himself, 
but  to  draw  ever  nearer  to  a  sense  of  what  is  indeed  beau- 
tiful, graceful,  and  becoming,  and  to  get  the  raw  person 
to  like  that. 

And  in  the  same  way  with  respect  to  railroads  and 
coal.  Every  one  must  have  observed  the  strange  language 
current  during  the  late  discussions  as  to  the  possible  fail- 
ures of  our  supplies  of  coal.  Our  coal,  thousands  of  peo- 
ple were  saying,  is  the  real  basis  of  our  national  greatness; 
if  our  coal  runs  short,  there  is  an  end  of  the  greatness 
of  England.  But  what  is  greatness?  culture  makes  us 
ask.  Greatness  is  a  spiritual  condition  worthy  to  excite 
love,  interest,  and  admiration;  and  the  outward  proof  of 
possessing  greatness  is  that  we  excite  love,  interest,  and 


4o8 


ARNOLD 


admiration.  If  England  were  swallowed  up  by  the  sea 
to-morrow,  which  of  the  two,  a  hundred  years  hence, 
would  most  excite  the  love,  interest,  and  admiration  of 
mankind — would  most,  therefore,  show  the  evidences  of 
having  possessed  greatness  —  the  England  of  the  last 
twenty  years,  or  the  England  of  Elizabeth,  of  a  time  of 
splendid  spiritual  effort,  but  when  our  coal,  and  our  in- 
dustrial operations  depending  on  coal,  were  very  little  de- 
veloped? Well,  then,  what  an  unsound  habit  of  mind  it 
must  be  which  makes  us  talk  of  things  like  coal  or  iron 
as  constituting  the  greatness  of  England,  and  how  salutary 
a  friend  is  culture,  bent  on  seeing  things  as  they  are,  and 
thus  dissipating  delusions  of  this  kind  and  fixing  stand- 
ards of  perfection  that  are  real! 

Wealth,  again,  that  end  to  which  our  prodigious  works 
for  material  advantage  are  directed,  the  commonest  of 
commonplaces  tells  us  how  men  are  always  apt  to  regard 
wealth  as  a  precious  end  in  itself;  and  certainly  they  have 
never  been  so  apt  thus  to  regard  it  as  they  are  in  England 
at  the  present  time.  Never  did  people  believe  anything 
more  firmly  than  nine  Englishmen  out  of  ten  at  the  present 
day  believe  that  our  greatness  and  welfare  are  proved  by 
our  being  so  very  rich.  Now,  the  use  of  culture  is  that  it 
helps  us,  by  means  of  its  spiritual  standard  of  perfection, 
to  regard  wealth  but  as  machinery,  and  not  only  to  say 
as  a  matter  of  words  that  we  regard  wealth  as  but  machin- 
ery, but  really  to  perceive  and  feel  that  it  is  so.  If  it 
were  not  for  this  purging  effect  wrought  upon  our  minds 
by  culture,  the  whole  world,  the  future  as  well  as  the  pres- 
ent, would  inevitably  belong  to  the  Philistines.  The  peo- 
ple who  believe  most  that  our  greatness  and  welfare  are 
proved  by  our  being  very  rich,  and  who  most  give  their 
lives  and  thoughts  to  becoming  rich,  are  just  the  very 
people  whom  we  call  Philistines.  Culture  says:  "  Con- 
sider these  people,  then,  their  way  of  life,  their  habits,  their 
manners,  the  very  tones  of  their  voice;  look  at  them  atten- 
tively; observe  the  literature  they  read,  the  things  which 
give  them  pleasure,  the  words  which  come  forth  out  of 
their  mouths,  the  thoughts  which  make  the  furniture  of 
their  minds;  would  any  amount  of  wealth  be  worth  hav- 
ing with  the  condition  that  one  was  to  become  just  like 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT  409 

these  people  by  having  it?  "  And  thus  culture  begets  a 
dissatisfaction  which  is  of  the  highest  possible  value  in 
stemming  the  common  tide  of  men's  thoughts  in  a  wealthy 
and  industrial  community,  and  which  saves  the  future,  as 
one  may  hope,  from  being  vulgarized,  even  if  it  can  not 
save  the  present. 

Population,  again,  and  bodily  health  and  vigour,  are 
things  which  are  nowhere  treated  in  such  an  unintelli- 
gent, misleading,  exaggerated  way  as  in  England.  Both  are 
really  machinery;  yet  how  many  people  all  around  us  do 
we  see  rest  in  them  and  fail  to  look  beyond  them!  Why, 
one  has  heard  people,  fresh  from  reading  certain  articles 
of  the  "  Times  "  on  the  Registrar-General's  returns  of  mar- 
riages and  births  in  this  country,  who  would  talk  of  our 
large  English  families  in  quite  a  solemn  strain,  as  if  they 
had  something  in  itself  beautiful,  elevating,  and  meritori- 
ous in  them;  as  if  the  British  Philistine  would  have  only 
to  present  himself  before  the  Great  Judge  with  his  twelve 
children  in  order  to  be  received  among  the  sheep  as  a 
matter  of  right! 

But  bodily  health  and  vigour,  it  may  be  said,  are  not 
to  be  classed  with  wealth  and  population  as  mere  machin- 
ery; they  have  a  more  real  and  essential  value.  True;  but 
only  as  they  are  more  intimately  connected  with  a  perfect 
spiritual  condition  than  wealth  or  population  are.  The 
moment  we  disjoin  them  from  a  perfect  spiritual  condi- 
tion, and  pursue  them,  as  we  do  pursue  them,  for  their 
own  sake  and  as  ends  in  themselves,  our  worship  of  them 
becomes  as  mere  worship  of  machinery,  as  our  worship  of 
wealth  and  population,  and  as  unintelligent  and  vulgarizing 
a  worship  as  that  is.  Every  one  with  anything  like  an 
adequate  idea  of  human  perfection  has  distinctly  marked 
this  subordination  to  higher  and  spiritual  ends  of  the  cul- 
tivation of  bodily  vigour  and  activity.  "  Bodily  exercise 
profiteth  little;  but  godliness  is  profitable  unto  all  things," 
says  the  author  of  the  "  Epistle  to  Timothy."  And  the 
utilitarian  Franklin  says  just  as  explicitly,  "  Eat  and  drink 
such  an  exact  quantity  as  suits  the  constitution  of  thy 
body,  in  reference  to  the  services  of  the  mind."  But  the 
point  of  view  of  culture,  keeping  the  mark  of  human  per- 
fection simply  and  broadly  in  view,  and  not  assigning  to 


4,0  ARNOLD 

this  perfection,  as  religion  or  utilitarianism  assigns  to  it, 
a  special  and  limited  character,  this  point  of  view,  I  say, 
of  culture  is  best  given  by  these  words  of  Epictetus:  "  It 
is  a  sign  of  d<f>vfa,"  says  he — that  is,  of  a  nature  not  finely 
tempered — "  to  give  yourself  up  to  things  which  relate  to 
the  body;  to  make,  for  instance,  a  great  fuss  about  exer- 
cise, a  great  fuss  about  eating,  a  great  fuss  about  drinking, 
a  great  fuss  about  walking,  a  great  fuss  about  riding.  All 
these  things  ought  to  be  done  merely  by  the  way;  the 
formation  of  the  spirit  and  character  must  be  our  real 
concern."  This  is  admirable;  and,  indeed,  the  Greek 
word  ctyvta,  a  finely  tempered  nature,  gives  exactly  the 
notion  of  perfection  as  culture  brings  us  to  conceive  it:  a 
harmonious  perfection,  a  perfection  in  which  the  char- 
acters of  beauty  and  intelligence  are  both  present,  which 
unites  "  the  two  noblest  of  things  " — as  Swift,  who  of 
one  of  the  two,  at  any  rate,  had  himself  all  too  little,  most 
happily  calls  them  in  his  "  Battle  of  the  Books  " — "  the 
two  noblest  of  things,  sweetness  and  light."  The  evfafa 
is  the  man  who  tends  toward  sweetness  and  light;  the 
«</>i"79,  on  the  other  hand,  is  our  Philistine.  The  immense 
spiritual  significance  of  the  Greeks  is  due  to  their  having 
been  inspired  with  this  central  and  happy  idea  of  the  essen- 
tial character  of  human  perfection;  and  Mr.  B  right's  mis- 
conception of  culture,  as  a  smattering  of  Greek  and  Latin, 
comes  itself,  after  all,  from  this  wonderful  significance  of 
the  Greeks  having  affected  the  very  machinery  of  our 
education,  and  is  in  itself  a  kind  of  homage  to  it. 

In  thus  making  sweetness  and  light  to  be  characters 
of  perfection,  culture  is  of  like  spirit  with  poetry,  follows 
one  law  with  poetry.  Far  more  than  on  our  freedom,  our 
population,  and  our  industrialism,  many  among  us  rely 
upon  our  religious  organizations  to  save  us.  I  have  called 
religion  a  yet  more  important  manifestation  of  human 
nature  than  poetry,  because  it  has  worked  on  a  broader 
scale  for  perfection,  and  with  greater  masses  of  men.  But 
the  idea  of  beauty  and  of  a  human  nature  perfect  on  all 
its  sides,  which  is  the  dominant  idea  of  poetry,  is  a  true 
and  invaluable  idea,  though  it  has  not  yet  had  the  success 
that  the  idea  of  conquering  the  obvious  faults  of  our  ani- 
mality,  and  of  a  human  nature  perfect  on  the  moral  side — 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT 


411 


which  is  the  dominant  idea  of  religion — has  been  enabled 
to  have;  and  it  is  destined,  adding  to  itself  the  religious 
idea  of  a  devout  energy,  to  transform  and  govern  the  other. 

The  best  art  and  poetry  of  the  Greeks,  in  which  re- 
ligion and  poetry  are  one,  in  which  the  idea  of  beauty 
and  of  a  human  nature  perfect  on  all  sides  adds  to  itself  a 
religious  and  devout  energy,  and  works  in  the  strength 
of  that,  is  on  this  account  of  such  surpassing  interest  and 
instructiveness  for  us,  though  it  was — as,  having  regard 
to  the  human  race  in  general  and,  indeed,  having  regard 
to  the  Greeks  themselves,  we  must  own — a  premature 
attempt,  an  attempt  which  for  success  needed  the  moral 
and  religious  fibre  in  humanity  to  be  more  braced  and 
developed  than  it  had  yet  been.  But  Greece  did  not  err 
in  having  the  idea  of  beauty,  harmony,  and  complete 
human  perfection  so  present  and  paramount.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  have  this  idea  too  present  and  paramount;  only, 
the  moral  fibre  must  be  braced  too.  And  we,  because  we 
have  braced  the  moral  fibre,  are  not  on  that  account  in 
the  right  way,  if  at  the  same  time  the  idea  of  beauty,  har- 
mony, and  complete  human  perfection  is  wanting  or  mis- 
apprehended among  us;  and  evidently  it  is  wanting  or 
misapprehended  at  present.  And  when  we  rely  as  we  do 
on  our  religious  organizations,  which  in  themselves  do 
not  and  can  not  give  us  this  idea,  and  think  we  have  done 
enough  if  we  make  them  spread  and  prevail,  then,  I  say, 
we  fall  into  our  common  fault  of  over-valuing  machinery. 

Nothing  is  more  common  than  for  people  to  confound 
the  inward  peace  and  satisfaction  which  follows  the  sub- 
duing of  the  obvious  faults  of  our  animality  with  what  I 
may  call  absolute  inward  peace  and  satisfaction — the  peace 
and  satisfaction  which  are  reached  as  we  draw  near  to 
complete  spiritual  perfection,  and  not  merely  to  moral  per- 
fection, or  rather  to  relative  moral  perfection.  No  people 
in  the  world  have  done  more  and  struggled  more  to  attain 
this  relative  moral  perfection  than  our  English  race  has. 
For  no  people  in  the  world  has  the  command  to  resist  the 
devil,  to  overcome  the  wicked  one,  in  the  nearest  and 
most  obvious  sense  of  those  words,  had  such  a  pressing 
force  and  reality.  And  we  have  had  our  reward,  not  only 
in  the  great  worldly  prosperity  which  our  obedience  to 


ARNOLD 

this  command  has  brought  us,  but  also,  and  far  more,  in 
great  inward  peace  and  satisfaction.  But  to  me  few 
things  are  more  pathetic  than  to  see  people,  on  the 
strength  of  the  inward  peace  and  satisfaction  which  their 
rudimentary  efforts  toward  perfection  have  brought  them, 
employ,  concerning  their  incomplete  perfection  and  the 
religious  organizations  within  which  they  have  found  it, 
language  which  properly  applies  only  to  complete  perfec- 
tion, and  is  a  far-off  echo  of  the  human  soul's  prophecy  of 
it.  Religion  itself,  I  need  hardly  say,  supplies  them  in 
abundance  with  this  grand  language.  And  very  freely  do 
they  use  it;  yet  it  is  really  the  severest  possible  criticism 
of  such  an  incomplete  perfection  as  alone  we  have  yet 
reached  through  our  religious  organizations. 

The  impulse  of  the  English  race  toward  moral  devel- 
opment and  self-conquest  has  nowhere  so  powerfully 
manifested  itself  as  in  Puritanism.  Nowhere  has  Puritan- 
ism found  so  adequate  an  expression  as  in  the  religious 
organization  of  the  Independents.  The  modern  Independ- 
ents have  a  newspaper,  the  "  Nonconformist,"  written 
with  great  sincerity  and  ability.  The  motto,  the  standard, 
the  profession  of  faith  which  this  organ  of  theirs  carries 
aloft,  is:  "  The  Dissidence  of  Dissent  and  the  Protestant- 
ism of  the  Protestant  Religion."  There  is  sweetness  and 
light,  and  an  ideal  of  complete  harmonious  human  per- 
fection! One  need  not  go  to  culture  and  poetry  to  find 
language  to  judge  it.  Religion,  with  its  instinct  for  per- 
fection, supplies  language  to  judge  it — language,  too, 
which  is  in  our  mouths  every  day.  "  Finally,  be  of  one 
mind,  united  in  feeling,"  says  St.  Peter.  There  is  an  ideal 
which  judges  the  Puritan  ideal:  "The  Dissidence  of  Dis- 
sent and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  Religion!  " 
And  religious  organizations  like  this  are  what  people  be- 
lieve in,  rest  in,  and  give  their  lives  for!  Such,  I  say,  is 
the  wonderful  virtue  of  even  the  beginnings  of  perfection, 
of  having  conquered  even  the  plain  faults  of  our  animality, 
that  the  religious  organization  which  has  helped  us  to  do 
it  can  seem  to  us  something  precious,  salutary,  and  to  be 
propagated,  even  when  it  wears  such  a  brand  of  imperfec- 
tion on  its  forehead  as  this.  And  men  have  got  such  a 
habit  of  giving  to  the  language  of  religion  a  special  appli- 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT 


413 


cation,  of  making  it  a  mere  jargon,  that  for  the  condemna- 
tion which  religion  itself  passes  on  the  shortcomings  of 
their  religious  organizations  they  have  no  ear;  they  are 
sure  to  cheat  themselves  and  to  explain  this  condemnation 
away.  They  can  only  be  reached  by  the  criticism  which 
culture,  like  poetry,  speaking  a  language  not  to  be  sophis- 
ticated, and  resolutely  testing  these  organizations  by  the 
ideal  of  a  human  perfection  complete  on  all  sides,  applies 
to  them. 

But  men  of  culture  and  poetry,  it  will  be  said,  are  again 
and  again  failing,  and  failing  conspicuously,  in  the  neces- 
sary first  stage  to  a  harmonious  perfection,  in  the  subdu- 
ing of  the  great  obvious  faults  of  our  animality,  which 
it  is  the  glory  of  these  religious  organizations  to  have 
helped  us  to  subdue.  True,  they  do  often  so  fail.  They 
have  often  been  without  the  virtues  as  well  as  the  faults 
of  the  Puritan;  it  has  been  one  of  their  dangers  that  they 
so  felt  the  Puritan's  faults  that  they  too  much  neglected 
the  practice  of  his  virtues.  I  will  not,  however,  exculpate 
them  at  the  Puritan's  expense.  They  have  often  failed  in 
morality,  and  morality  is  indispensable.  And  they  have 
been  punished  for  their  failure,  as  the  Puritan  has  been 
rewarded  for  his  performance.  They  have  been  punished 
wherein  they  erred;  but  their  ideal  of  beauty,  of  sweetness 
and  light,  and  a  human  nature  complete  on  all  its  sides, 
remains  the  true  ideal  of  perfection  still;  just  as  the  Puri- 
tan's ideal  of  perfection  remains  narrow  and  inadequate, 
although  for  what  he  did  well  he  has  been  richly  rewarded. 
Notwithstanding  the  mighty  results  of  the  Pilgrim  Fa- 
thers' voyage,  they  and  their  standard  of  perfection  are 
rightly  judged  when  we  figure  to  ourselves  Shakespeare 
or  Virgil — souls  in  whom  sweetness  and  light,  and  all  that 
in  human  nature  is  most  humane,  were  eminent — accom- 
panying them  on  their  voyage,  and  think  what  intolerable 
company  Shakespeare  and  Virgil  would  have  found  them! 
In  the  same  way  let  us  judge  the  religious  organizations 
which  we  see  all  around  us.  Do  not  let  us  deny  the  good 
and  the  happiness  which  they  have  accomplished;  but  do 
not  fail  to  let  us  see  clearly  that  their  idea  of  human  per- 
fection is  narrow  and  inadequate,  and  that  the  Dissidence 
of  Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  Re- 


4,4  ARNOLD 

ligion  will  never  bring  humanity  to  its  true  goal.  As  I 
said  with  regard  to  wealth — "  Let  us  look  at  the  life  of 
those  who  live  in  and  for  it " — so  I  say  with  regard  to 
the  religious  organizations.  Look  at  the  life  imaged  in 
such  a  newspaper  as  the  "  Nonconformist  " — a  life  of  jeal- 
ousy of  the  Establishment,  disputes,  tea-meetings,  open- 
ings of  chapels,  sermons;  and  then  think  of  it  as  an  ideal 
of  a  human  life  completing  itself  on  all  sides,  and  aspiring 
with  all  its  organs  after  sweetness,  light,  and  perfection! 

Another  newspaper,  representing,  like  the  "  Noncon- 
formist," one  of  the  religious  organizations  of  this  country, 
was  a  short  time  ago  giving  an  account  of  the  crowd  at 
Epsom  on  the  Derby  day,  and  of  all  the  vice  and  hide- 
ousness  which  was  to  be  seen  in  that  crowd;  and  then  the 
writer  turned  suddenly  round  upon  Professor  Huxley  and 
asked  him  how  he  proposed  to  cure  all  this  vice  and  hide- 
ousness  without  religion.  I  confess  I  felt  disposed  to  ask 
the  asker  this  question:  And  how  do  you  propose  to  cure 
it  with  such  a  religion  as  yours?  How  is  the  ideal  of  a 
life  so  unlovely,  so  unattractive,  so  incomplete,  so  nar- 
row, so  far  removed  from  a  true  and  satisfying  ideal  of 
human  perfection,  as  is  the  life  of  your  religious  organiza- 
tion as  you  yourself  reflect  it,  to  conquer  and  transform 
all  this  vice  and  hideousness?  Indeed,  the  strongest  plea 
for  the  study  of  perfection  as  pursued  by  culture,  the  clear- 
est proof  of  the  actual  inadequacy  of  the  idea  of  perfection 
held  by  the  religious  organizations — expressing,  as  I  have 
said,  the  most  widespread  effort  which  the  human  race 
has  yet  made  after  perfection — is  to  be  found  in  the  state 
of  our  life  and  society  with  these  in  possession  of  it,  and 
having  been  in  possession  of  it  I  know  not  how  many 
hundred  years.  We  are  all  of  us  included  in  some  religious 
organization  or  other;  we  all  call  ourselves,  in  the  sublime 
and  aspiring  language  of  religion  which  I  have  before 
noticed,  children  of  God.  Children  of  God;  it  is  an  im- 
mense pretension!  and  how  are  we  to  justify  it?  By  the 
works  which  we  do,  and  the  words  which  we  speak.  And 
the  work  which  we  collective  children  of  God  do,  our 
grand  centre  of  life,  our  city  which  we  have  builded  for 
us  to  dwell  in,  is  London!  London,  with  its  unutterable  ex- 
ternal hideousness,  and  with  its  internal  canker  of  "  publice 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT  415 

egestas,  privatim  opulentia  " — to  use  the  words  which  Sal- 
lust  puts  into  Cato's  mouth  about  Rome — unequalled  in 
the  world!  The  word,  again,  which  we  children  of  God 
speak,  the  voice  which  most  hits  our  collective  thought, 
the  newspaper  with  the  largest  circulation  in  England, 
nay,  with  the  largest  circulation  in  the  whole  world,  is  the 
"  Daily  Telegraph  " !  I  say  that  when  our  religious  organi- 
zations— which  I  admit  to  express  the  most  considerable 
effort  after  perfection  that  our  race  has  yet  made — land 
us  in  no  better  result  than  this,  it  is  high  time  to  examine 
carefully  their  idea  of  perfection,  to  see  whether  it  does 
not  leave  out  of  account  sides  and  forces  of  human  nature 
which  we  might  turn  to  great  use;  whether  it  would  not 
be  more  operative  if  it  were  more  complete.  And  I  say 
that  the  English  reliance  on  our  religious  organizations 
and  on  their  ideas  of  human  perfection  just  as  they  stand, 
is  like  our  reliance  on  freedom,  on  muscular  Christianity, 
on  population,  on  coal,  on  wealth — mere  belief  in  machin- 
ery, and  unfruitful;  and  that  it  is  wholesomely  counter- 
acted by  culture,  bent  on  seeing  things  as  they  are,  and 
on  drawing  the  human  race  onward  to  a  more  complete, 
a  harmonious  perfection. 

Culture,  however,  shows  its  single-minded  love  of  per- 
fection, its  desire  simply  to  make  reason  and  the  will  of 
God  prevail,  its  freedom  from  fanaticism,  by  its  attitude 
toward  all  this  machinery,  even  while  it  insists  that  it  is 
machinery.  Fanatics,  seeing  the  mischief  men  do  them- 
selves by  their  blind  belief  in  some  machinery  or  other — 
whether  it  is  wealth  and  industrialism,  or  whether  it  is  the 
cultivation  of  bodily  strength  and  activity,  or  whether  it 
is  a  political  organization,  or  whether  it  is  a  religious 
organization — oppose  with  might  and  main  the  tendency 
to  this  or  that  political  and  religious  organization,  or  to 
games  and  athletic  exercises,  or  to  wealth  and  industrial- 
ism, and  try  violently  to  stop  it.  But  the  flexibility  which 
sweetness  and  light  give,  and  which  is  one  of  the  rewards 
of  culture  pursued  in  good  faith,  enables  a  man  to  see  that 
a  tendency  may  be  necessary,  and  even,  as  a  preparation 
for  something  in  the  future,  salutary,  and  yet  that  the 
generations  or  individuals  who  obey  this  tendency  are  sac- 
rificed to  it,  that  they  fall  short  of  the  hope  of  perfection 


ARNOLD 

by  following  it;  and  that  its  mischiefs  are  to  be  criticised, 
lest  it  should  take  too  firm  a  hold  and  last  after  it  has 
served  its  purpose. 

Mr.  Gladstone  well  pointed  out,  in  a  speech  at  Paris — 
and  others  have  pointed  out  the  same  thing — how  neces- 
sary is  the  present  great  movement  toward  wealth  and  in- 
dustrialism, in  order  to  lay  broad  foundations  of  material 
well-being  for  the  society  of  the  future.  The  worst  of 
these  justifications  is  that  they  are  generally  addressed  to 
the  very  people  engaged,  body  and  soul,  in  the  movement 
in  question;  at  all  events,  that  they  are  always  seized  with 
the  greatest  avidity  by  these  people,  and  taken  by  them  as 
quite  justifying  their  life;  and  that  thus  they  tend  to 
harden  them  in  their  sins.  Now,  culture  admits  the  neces- 
sity of  the  movement  toward  fortune-making  and  exag- 
gerated industrialism,  readily  allows  that  the  future  may 
derive  benefit  from  it;  but  insists,  at  the  same  time,  that 
the  passing  generations  of  industrialists,  forming,  for  the 
most  part,  the  stout  main  body  of  Philistinism — are  sacri- 
ficed to  it.  In  the  same  way  the  result  of  all  the  games 
and  sports  which  occupy  the  passing  generation  of  boys 
and  young  men  may  be  the  establishment  of  a  better  and 
sounder  physical  type  for  the  future  to  work  with.  Cul- 
ture does  not  set  itself  against  the  games  and  sports;  it 
congratulates  the  future,  and  hopes  it  will  make  a  good 
use  of  its  improved  physical  basis;  but  it  points  out  that 
our  passing  generation  of  boys  and  young  men  is,  mean- 
time, sacrificed.  Puritanism  was  perhaps  necessary  to  de- 
velop the  moral  fibre  of  the  English  race,  nonconformity 
to  break  the  yoke  of  ecclesiastical  domination  over  men's 
minds,  and  to  prepare  the  way  for  freedom  of  thought  in 
the  distant  future;  still,  culture  points  out  that  the  har- 
monious perfection  of  generations  of  Puritans  and  Non- 
conformists has  been,  in  consequence,  sacrificed.  Free- 
dom of  speech  may  be  necessary  for  the  society  of  the 
future,  but  the  young  lions  of  the  "  Daily  Telegraph  "  in 
the  meanwhile  are  sacrificed.  A  voice  for  every  man  in 
his  country's  government  may  be  necessary  for  the  society 
of  the  future,  but  meanwhile  Mr.  Beales  and  Mr.  Brad- 
laugh  are  sacrificed. 

Oxford,  the  Oxford  of  the  past,  has  many  faults,  and 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT 


417 


she  has  heavily  paid  for  them  in  defeat,  in  isolation,  in 
want  of  hold  upon  the  modern  world.  Yet  we  in  Oxford, 
brought  up  amid  the  beauty  and  sweetness  of  that  beau- 
tiful place,  have  not  failed  to  seize  one  truth — the  truth 
that  beauty  and  sweetness  are  essential  characters  of  a 
complete  human  perfection.  When  I  insist  on  this  I  am 
all  in  the  faith  and  tradition  of  Oxford.  I  say  boldly  that 
this  our  sentiment  for  beauty  and  sweetness,  our  sentiment 
against  hideousness  and  rawness,  has  been  at  the  bottom 
of  our  attachment  to  so  many  beaten  causes,  of  our  opposi- 
tion to  so  many  triumphant  movements.  And  the  senti- 
ment is  true,  and  has  never  been  wholly  defeated,  and  has 
shown  its  power  even  in  its  defeat.  We  have  not  won  our 
political  battles,  we  have  not  carried  our  main  points,  we 
have  not  stopped  our  adversaries'  advance,  we  have  not 
marched  victoriously  with  the  modern  world;  but  we  have 
told  silently  upon  the  mind  of  the  country,  we  have  pre- 
pared currents  of  feeling  which  sap  our  adversaries'  posi- 
tion when  it  seems  gained,  we  have  kept  up  our  own  com- 
munications with  the  future.  Look  at  the  course  of  the 
great  movement  which  shook  Oxford  to  its  centre  some 
thirty  years  ago!  It  was  directed,  as  any  one  who  reads 
Dr.  Newman's  "  Apology  "  may  see,  against  what  in  one 
word  may  be  called  "  Liberalism."  Liberalism  prevailed; 
it  was  the  appointed  force  to  do  the  work  of  the  hour; 
it  was  necessary,  it  was  inevitable  that  it  should  prevail. 
The  Oxford  movement  was  broken,  it  failed;  our  wrecks 
are  scattered  on  every  shore: 

"  Quae  regie  in  terris  nostri  non  plena  laboris?  " 

But  what  was  it,  this  liberalism,  as  Dr.  Newman  saw  it, 
and  as  it  really  broke  the  Oxford  movement?  It  was  the 
great  middle-class  liberalism,  which  had  for  the  cardinal 
points  of  its  belief  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  and  local  self- 
government,  in  politics;  in  the  social  sphere,  free-trade, 
unrestricted  competition,  and  the  making  of  large  indus- 
trial fortunes;  in  the  religious  sphere  the  Dissidence  of 
Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  Religion. 
I  do  not  say  that  other  and  more  intelligent  forces  than 
this  were  not  opposed  to  the  Oxford  movement;  but  this 
was  the  force  which  really  beat  it;  this  was  the  force 


4i8 


ARNOLD 


which  Dr.  Newman  felt  himself  fighting  with;  this  was 
the  force  which  till  only  the  other  day  seemed  to  be  the 
paramount  force  in  this  country,  and  to  be  in  posses- 
sion of  the  future;  this  was  the  force  whose  achievements 
fill  Mr.  Lowe  with  such  inexpressible  admiration,  and 
whose  rule  he  was  so  horror-struck  to  see  threatened. 
And  where  is  this  great  force  of  Philistinism  now?  It  is 
thrust  into  the  second  rank,  it  is  become  a  power  of  yester- 
day, it  has  lost  the  future.  A  new  power  has  suddenly 
appeared,  a  power  which  it  is  impossible  yet  to  judge 
fully,  but  which  is  certainly  a  wholly  different  force  from 
middle-class  liberalism;  different  in  its  cardinal  points  of 
belief,  different  in  its  tendencies  in  every  sphere.  It  loves 
and  admires  neither  the  legislation  of  middle-class  Par- 
liaments, nor  the  local  self-government  of  middle-class 
vestries,  nor  the  unrestricted  competition  of  middle-class 
industrialists,  nor  the  dissidence  of  middle-class  Dissent 
and  the  Protestantism  of  middle-class  Protestant  religion. 
I  am  not  now  praising  this  new  force,  or  saying  that  its  own 
ideals  are  better;  all  I  say  is  that  they  are  wholly  different. 
And  who  will  estimate  how  much  the  currents  of  feeling 
created  by  Dr.  Newman's  movements,  the  keen  desire  for 
beauty  and  sweetness  which  it  nourished,  the  deep  aver- 
sion it  manifested  to  the  hardness  and  vulgarity  of  middle- 
class  liberalism,  the  strong  light  it  turned  on  the  hideous 
and  grotesque  illusions  of  middle-class  Protestantism — 
who  will  estimate  how  much  all  these  contributed  to  swell 
the  tide  of  secret  dissatisfaction  which  has  mined  the 
ground  under  self-confident  liberalism  of  the  last  thirty 
years,  and  has  prepared  the  way  for  its  sudden  collapse  and 
supersession?  It  is  in  this  manner  that  the  sentiment  of 
Oxford  for  beauty  and  sweetness  conquers,  and  in  this 
manner  long  may  it  continue  to  conquer! 

In  this  manner  it  works  to  the  same  end  as  culture,  and 
there  is  plenty  of  work  for  it  yet  to  do.  I  have  said  that 
the  new  and  more  democratic  force  which  is  now  su- 
perseding our  old  middle-class  liberalism  can  not  yet  be 
rightly  judged.  It  has  its  main  tendencies  still  to  form. 
We  hear  promises  of  its  giving  us  administrative  reform, 
law  reform,  reform  of  education,  and  I  know  not  what; 
but  those  promises  come  rather  from  its  advocates,  wish- 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT 


419 


ing  to  make  a  good  plea  for  it  and  to  justify  it  for  super- 
seding middle-class  liberalism,  than  from  clear  tendencies 
which  it  has  itself  yet  developed.  But  meanwhile  it  has 
plenty  of  well-intentioned  friends  against  whom  culture 
may  with  advantage  continue  to  uphold  steadily  its  ideal 
of  human  perfection;  that  this  is  an  inward  spiritual  activ- 
ity, having  for  its  characters  increased  sweetness,  increased 
light,  increased  life,  increased  sympathy.  Mr.  Bright,  who 
has  a  foot  in  both  worlds,  the  world  of  middle-class  lib- 
eralism and  the  world  of  democracy,  but  who  brings  most 
of  his  ideas  from  the  world  of  middle-class  liberalism  in 
which  he  was  bred,  always  inclines  to  inculcate  that  faith 
in  machinery  to  which,  as  we  have  seen,  Englishmen  are 
so  prone,  and  which  has  been  the  bane  of  middle-class 
liberalism.  He  complains  with  a  sorrowful  indignation  of 
people  who  "  appear  to  have  no  proper  estimate  of  the 
value  of  the  franchise  ";  he  leads  his  disciples  to  believe — 
what  the  Englishman  is  always  too  ready  to  believe — that 
the  having  a  vote,  like  the  having  a  large  family,  or  a 
large  business,  or  large  muscles,  has  in  itself  some  edify- 
ing and  perfecting  effect  upon  human  nature.  Or  else 
he  cries  out  to  the  democracy — "  the  men,"  as  he  calls 
them,  "  upon  whose  shoulders  the  greatness  of  England 
rests  " — he  cries  out  to  them:  "  See  what  you  have  done! 
I  look  over  this  country  and  see  the  cities  you  have  built, 
the  railroads  you  have  made,  the  manufactures  you  have 
produced,  the  cargoes  which  freight  the  ships  of  the  great- 
est mercantile  navy  the  world  has  ever  seen!  I  see  that 
you  have  converted  by  your  labours  what  was  once  a 
wilderness,  these  islands,  into  a  fruitful  garden;  I  know 
that  you  have  created  this  wealth,  and  are  a  nation  whose 
name  is  a  word  of  power  throughout  all  the  world."  Why, 
this  is  just  the  very  style  of  laudation  with  which  Mr. 
Roebuck  or  Mr.  Lowe  debauches  the  minds  of  the  middle 
classes,  and  makes  such  Philistines  of  them.  It  is  the 
same  fashion  of  teaching  a  man  to  value  himself  not  on 
what  he  is,  not  on  his  progress  in  sweetness  and  light,  but 
on  the  number  of  the  railroads  he  has  constructed,  or  the 
bigness  of  the  tabernacle  he  has  built.  Only  the  middle 
classes  are  told  they  have  done  it  all  with  their  energy, 
self-reliance,  and  capital,  and  the  democracy  are  told  they 


420 


ARNOLD 


have  done  it  all  with  their  hands  and  sinews.  But  teaching 
the  democracy  to  put  its  trust  in  achievements  of  this  kind 
is  merely  training  them  to  be  Philistines  to  take  the  place 
of  the  Philistines  whom  they  are  superseding;  and  they, 
too,  like  the  middle  class,  will  be  encouraged  to  sit  down 
at  the  banquet  of  the  future  without  having  on  a  wedding 
garment,  and  nothing  excellent  can  then  come  from  them. 
Those  who  know  their  besetting  faults,  those  who  have 
watched  them  and  listened  to  them,  or  those  who  will 
read  the  instructive  account  recently  given  of  them  by  one 
of  themselves,  the  "  Journeyman  Engineer,"  will  agree 
that  the  idea  which  culture  sets  before  us  of  perfection — 
an  increased  spiritual  activity,  having  for  its  characters  in- 
creased sweetness,  increased  light,  increased  life,  increased 
sympathy — is  an  idea  which  the  new  democracy  needs  far 
more  than  the  idea  of  the  blessedness  of  the  franchise,  or 
the  wonderfulness  of  its  own  industrial  performances. 

Other  well-meaning  friends  of  this  new  power  are  for 
leading  it,  not  in  the  old  ruts  of  middle-class  Philistinism, 
but  in  ways  which  are  naturally  alluring  to  the  feet  of 
democracy,  though  in  this  country  they  are  novel  and 
untried  ways.  I  may  call  them  the  ways  of  Jacobinism. 
Violent  indignation  with  the  past,  abstract  systems  of  ren- 
ovation applied  wholesale,  a  new  doctrine  drawn  up  in 
black  and  white  for  elaborating  down  to  the  very  smallest 
details  a  rational  society  for  the  future — these  are  the  ways 
of  Jacobinism.  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  and  other  disciples 
of  Comte — one  of  them,  Mr.  Congreve,  is  an  old  friend  of 
mine,  and  I  am  glad  to  have  an  opportunity  of  publicly 
expressing  my  respect  for  his  talents  and  character — are 
among  the  friends  of  democracy  who  are  for  leading  it  in 
paths  of  this  kind.  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  is  very  hostile 
to  culture,  and  from  a  natural  enough  motive,  for  culture 
is  the  eternal  opponent  of  the  two  things  which  are  the 
signal  marks  of  Jacobinism:  its  fierceness,  and  its  addic- 
tion to  an  abstract  system.  Culture  is  always  assigning 
to  system-makers  and  systems  a  smaller  share  in  the  bent 
of  human  destiny  than  their  friends  like.  A  current  in 
people's  minds  sets  toward  new  ideas;  people  are  dissatis- 
fied with  their  old  narrow  stock  of  Philistine  ideas,  Anglo- 
Saxon  ideas,  or  any  other;  and  some  man,  some  Bentham 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT 


421 


or  Comte,  who  has  the  real  merit  of  having  early  and 
strongly  felt  and  helped  the  new  current,  but  who  brings 
plenty  of  narrowness  and  mistakes  of  his  own  into  his  feel- 
ing and  help  of  it,  is  credited  with  being  the  author  of  the 
whole  current,  the  fit  person  to  be  intrusted  with  its  regu- 
lation and  to  guide  the  human  race. 

The  excellent  German  historian  of  the  mythology  of 
Rome,  Preller,  relating  the  introduction  at  Rome  under 
the  Tarquins  of  the  worship  of  Apollo,  the  god  of  light, 
healing,  and  reconciliation,  will  have  us  observe  that  it  was 
not  so  much  the  Tarquins  who  brought  to  Rome  the  new 
worship  of  Apollo,  as  a  current  in  the  mind  of  the  Roman 
people  which  set  powerfully  at  that  time  toward  a  new 
worship  of  this  kind,  and  away  from  the  old  run  of  Latin 
and  Sabine  religious  ideas.  In  a  similar  way,  culture 
directs  our  attention  to  the  natural  current  there  is  in 
human  affairs,  and  to  its  continual  working,  and  will  not 
let  us  rivet  our  faith  upon  any  one  man  and  his  doings. 
It  makes  us  see  not  only  his  good  side,  but  also  how  much 
in  him  was  of  necessity  limited  and  transient;  nay,  it  even 
feels  a  pleasure,  a  sense  of  an  increased  freedom  and  of  an 
ampler  future,  in  so  doing. 

I  remember,  when  I  was  under  the  influence  of  a  mind 
to  which  I  feel  the  greatest  obligations,  the  mind  of  a  man 
who  was  the  very  incarnation  of  sanity  and  clear  sense,  a 
man  the  most  considerable,  it  seems  to  me,  whom  America 
has  yet  produced — Benjamin  Franklin — I  remember  the 
relief  with  which,  after  long  feeling  the  sway  of  Franklin's 
imperturbable  common  sense,  I  came  upon  a  project  of  his 
for  a  new  version  of  the  Book  of  Job,  to  replace  the  old 
version,  the  style  of  which,  says  Franklin,  has  become 
obsolete,  and  thence  less  agreeable.  "  I  give,"  he  con- 
tinues, "  a  few  verses,  which  may  serve  as  a  sample  of  the 
kind  of  version  I  would  recommend."  We  all  recollect 
the  famous  verse  in  our  translation :  "  Then  Satan  an- 
swered the  Lord  and  said,  *  Doth  Job  fear  God  for 
naught?  '  Franklin  makes  this:  "  Does  your  Majesty 
imagine  that  Job's  good  conduct  is  the  effect  of  personal 
attachment  and  affection?  "  I  well  remember  how,  when 
first  I  read  that,  I  drew  a  deep  breath  of  relief,  and  said 
to  myself,  "  After  all,  there  is  a  stretch  of  humanity  be- 
27 


422  ARNOLD 

yond  Franklin's  victorious  good  sense!"  So,  after  hear- 
ing Bentham  cried  loudly  up  as  the  renovator  of  modern 
society,  and  Bentham's  mind  and  ideas  proposed  as  the 
rulers  of  our  future,  I  open  the  "  Deontology."  There  I 
read:  "  While  Xenophon  was  writing  his  history,  and 
Euclid  teaching  geometry,  Socrates  and  Plato  were  talk- 
ing nonsense  under  pretence  of  talking  wisdom  and  moral- 
ity. This  morality  of  theirs  consisted  in  words;  this  wis- 
dom of  theirs  was  the  denial  of  matters  known  to  every 
man's  experience."  From  the  moment  of  reading  that  I 
am  delivered  from  the  bondage  of  Bentham!  the  fanati- 
cism of  his  adherents  can  touch  me  no  longer.  I  feel  the 
inadequacy  of  his  mind  and  ideas  for  supplying  the  rule 
of  human  society  for  perfection. 

Culture  tends  always  thus  to  deal  with  the  men  of  a 
system,  of  disciples,  of  a  school;  with  men  like  Comte,  or 
the  late  Mr.  Buckle,  or  Mr.  Mill.  However  much  it  may 
find  to  admire  in  these  personages,  or  in  some  of  them,  it 
nevertheless  remembers  the  text,  "  Be  not  ye  called 
Rabbi!"  and  it  soon  passes  on  from  any  Rabbi.  But 
Jacobinism  loves  a  Rabbi;  it  does  not  want  to  pass  on 
from  its  Rabbi  in  pursuit  of  a  future  and  still  unreached 
perfection;  it  wants  its  Rabbi  and  his  ideas  to  stand  for 
perfection,  that  they  may  with  the  more  authority  recast 
the  world;  and  for  Jacobinism,  therefore,  culture — eter- 
nally passing  onward  and  seeking — is  an  impertinence 
and  an  offence.  But  culture,  just  because  it  resists  this 
tendency  of  Jacobinism  to  impose  on  us  a  man  with  limita- 
tions and  errors  of  his  own  along  with  the  true  ideas  of 
which  he  is  the  organ,  really  does  the  world  and  Jacobin- 
ism itself  a  service. 

So,  too,  Jacobinism,  in  its  fierce  hatred  of  the  past,  and 
of  those  whom  it  makes  liable  for  the  sins  of  the  past, 
can  not  away  with  the  inexhaustible  indulgences  proper 
to  culture,  the  consideration  of  circumstances,  the  severe 
judgment  of  actions  joined  to  the  merciful  judgment  of 
persons.  '  The  man  of  culture  is  in  politics,"  cries  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison,  "one  of  the  poorest  mortals  alive!" 
Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  wants  to  be  doing  business,  and  he 
complains  that  the  man  of  culture  stops  him  with  a  "  turn 
for  small  fault-finding,  love  of  selfish  ease,  and  indecision 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT 


423 


in  action."  Of  what  use  is  culture,  he  asks,  except  for  "  a 
critic  of  new  books  or  a  professor  of  belles-lettres?  "  Why, 
it  is  of  use  because,  in  the  presence  of  the  fierce  exaspera- 
tion which  breathes,  or  rather,  I  may  say,  hisses  through 
the  whole  production  in  which  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  asks 
that  question,  it  reminds  us  that  the  perfection  of  human 
nature  is  sweetness  and  light.  It  is  of  use  because,  like 
religion — that  other  effort  after  perfection — it  testifies 
that  where  bitter  envying  and  strife  are  there  is  confusion 
and  every  evil  work. 

The  pursuit  of  perfection,  then,  is  the  pursuit  of  sweet- 
ness and  light.  He  who  works  for  sweetness  and  light 
works  to  make  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail.  He 
who  works  for  machinery,  he  who  works  for  hatred,  works 
only  for  confusion.  Culture  looks  beyond  machinery,  cul- 
ture hates  hatred;  culture  has  one  great  passion,  the  passion 
for  sweetness  and  light.  It  has  one  even  yet  greater! — the 
passion  for  making  them  prevail.  It  is  not  satisfied  till  we 
all  come  to  a  perfect  man;  it  knows  that  the  sweetness  and 
light  of  the  few  must  be  imperfect  until  the  raw  and  unkin- 
dled  masses  of  humanity  are  touched  with  sweetness  and 
light.  If  I  have  not  shrunk  from  saying  that  we  must  work 
for  sweetness  and  light,  so  neither  have  I  shrunk  from  say- 
ing that  we  must  have  a  broad  basis,  must  have  sweetness 
and  light  for  as  many  as  possible.  Again  and  again  I  have 
insisted  how  those  are  the  happy  moments  of  humanity, 
how  those  are  the  marking  epochs  of  a  people's  life,  how 
those  are  the  flowering  times  for  literature  and  art  and  all 
the  creative  power  of  genius,  when  there  is  a  national  glow 
of  life  and  thought,  when  the  whole  of  society  is  in  the  full- 
est measure  permeated  by  thought,  sensible  to  beauty,  in- 
telligent and  alive.  Only  it  must  be  real  thought  and  real 
beauty;  real  sweetness  and  real  light.  Plenty  of  people 
will  try  to  give  the  masses,  as  they  call  them,  an  intel- 
lectual food  prepared  and  adapted  in  the  way  they  think 
proper  for  the  actual  condition  of  the  masses.  The  ordi- 
nary popular  literature  is  an  example  of  this  way  of  work- 
ing on  the  masses.  Plenty  of  people  will  try  to  indoc- 
trinate the  masses  with  the  set  of  ideas  and  judgments  con- 
stituting the  creed  of  their  own  profession  or  party.  Our 
religious  and  political  organizations  give  an  example  of 


424  ARNOLD 

this  way  of  working  on  the  masses.  I  condemn  neither 
way;  but  culture  works  differently.  It  does  not  try  to 
teach  down  to  the  level  of  inferior  classes;  it  does  not  try 
to  win  them  for  this  or  that  sect  of  its  own,  with  ready- 
made  judgments  and  watchwords.  It  seeks  to  do  away 
with  classes;  to  make  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and 
known  in  the  world  current  everywhere;  to  make  all  men 
live  in  an  atmosphere  of  sweetness  and  light,  where  they 
may  use  ideas,  as  it  uses  them  itself,  freely — nourished 
and  not  bound  by  them. 

This  is  the  social  idea;  and  the  men  of  culture  are  the 
true  apostles  of  equality.  The  great  men  of  culture  are 
those  who  have  had  a  passion  for  diffusing,  for  making 
prevail,  for  carrying  from  one  end  of  society  to  the  other, 
the  best  knowledge,  the  best  ideas  of  their  time;  who  have 
laboured  to  divest  knowledge  of  all  that  was  harsh,  un- 
couth, difficult,  abstract,  professional,  exclusive;  to  hu- 
manize it,  to  make  it  efficient  outside  the  clique  of  the  cul- 
tivated and  learned,  yet  still  remaining  the  best  knowledge 
and  thought  of  the  time,  and  a  true  source,  therefore,  of 
sweetness  and  light.  Such  a  man  was  Abelard  in  the 
middle  ages,  in  spite  of  all  his  imperfections;  and  thence 
the  boundless  emotion  and  enthusiasm  which  Abelard  ex- 
cited. Such  were  Lessing  and  Herder  in  Germany,  at  the 
end  of  the  last  century;  and  their  services  to  Germany 
were  in  this  way  inestimably  precious.  Generations  will 
pass,  and  literary  monuments  will  accumulate,  and  works 
far  more  perfect  than  the  works  of  Lessing  and  Herder 
will  be  produced  in  Germany;  and  yet  the  names  of  these 
two  men  will  fill  a  German  with  a  reverence  and  enthusi- 
asm such  as  the  names  of  the  most  gifted  masters  will 
hardly  awaken.  And  why?  Because  they  humanized 
knowledge;  because  they  broadened  the  basis  of  life  and 
intelligence;  because  they  worked  powerfully  to  diffuse 
sweetness  and  light,  to  make  reason  and  the  will  of  God 
prevail.  With  St.  Augustine  they  said:  "  Let  us  not  leave 
thee  alone  to  make  in  the  secret  of  thy  knowledge,  as  thou 
didst  before  the  creation  of  the  firmament,  the  division  of 
light  from"  darkness;  let  the  children  of  thy  spirit,  placed 
in  their  firmament,  make  their  light  shine  upon  the  earth, 
mark  the  division  of  night  and  day,  and  announce  the 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT  425 

revolution  of  the  times;  for  the  old  order  is  passed,  and 
the  new  arises;  the  night  is  spent,  the  day  is  come  forth; 
and  thou  shalt  crown  the  year  with  thy  blessing,  when 
thou  shalt  send  forth  labourers  into  the  harvest  sown  by 
other  hands  than  theirs;  when  thou  shalt  send  forth  new 
labourers  to  new  seed-times,  whereof  the  harvest  shall  be 
not  yet." 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  FRIENDS 


BY 

GAIL   HAMILTON 


MARY  ABBY  DODGE,  who  is  known  in  literature  only  as  "Gail  Ham- 
ilton," was  born  in  Hamilton,  Mass.,  in  1833.  She  became  a  teacher 
in  Hartford,  and  afterward  was  a  governess  in  the  family  of  Gamaliel 
Bailey,  editor  of  the  "  National  Era,"  in  Washington,  and  was  a  contribu- 
tor to  that  paper.  She  published  her  first  book  in  1862,  and  the  others 
followed  in  rapid  succession  for  fifteen  years.  They  were  mostly  collec- 
tions of  essays  on  modern  American  life,  and  their  vivacity  and  forceful- 
ness  secured  for  them  quick  recognition  and  wide  circulation.  She  was 
a  cousin  of  Mrs.  James  G.  Elaine,  and  during  a  large  part  of  Mr.  Elaine's 
life  in  Washington  she  was  a  member  of  his  household.  He  bequeathed 
all  his  papers  to  her,  and  her  last  work  was  his  biography.  She  organ- 
ized a  class  for  Eible  study  in  Washington,  of  which  she  was  the  leader, 
and  one  of  her  latest  books  is  a  history  of  it.  During  the  civil  war  her 
pen  was  used  vigorously  in  the  national  cause,  and  afterward  she  wrote 
much  for  the  reviews  on  political  and  social  subjects.  She  died  in  her 
native  town,  August  17,  1896.  The  essay  chosen  for  this  place  is  from 
her  volume  entitled  "Country  Living  and  Country  Thinking,"  and  is 
used  by  the  courtesy  of  her  surviving  sister. 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  FRIENDS 

IF  things  would  not  run  into  each  other  so,  it  would  be 
a  thousand  times  easier  and  a  million  times  pleasanter 
to  get  on  in  the  world.  Let  the  sheepiness  be  set  on 
one  side  and  the  goatiness  on  the  other,  and  immediately 
you  know  where  you  are.  It  is  not  necessary  to  ask  that 
there  be  any  increase  of  the  one  or  any  diminution  of  the 
other,  but  only  that  each  shall  pre-empt  its  own  territory 
and  stay  there.  Milk  is  good,  and  water  is  good,  but  don't 
set  the  milk-pail  under  the  pump.  Pleasure  softens  pain, 
but  pain  embitters  pleasure;  and  who  would  not  rather 
have  his  happiness  concentrated  into  one  memorable  day, 
that  shall  gleam  and  glow  through  a  lifetime,  than  have  it 
spread  out  over  a  dozen  comfortable,  commonplace,  hum- 
drum forenoons  and  afternoons,  each  one  as  like  the  others 
as  two  peas  in  a  pod?  Since  the  law  of  compensation  ob- 
tains, I  suppose  it  is  the  best  law  for  us;  but  if  it  had  been 
left  with  me,  I  should  have  made  the  clever  people  rich 
and  handsome,  and  left  poverty  and  ugliness  to  the  stupid 
people;  because — don't  you  see? — the  stupid  people  won't 
know  they  are  ugly,  and  won't  care  if  they  are  poor,  but 
the  clever  people  will  be  hampered  and  tortured.  I  would 
have  given  the  good  wives  to  the  good  husbands,  and 
made  drunken  men  marry  drunken  women.  Then  there 
would  have  been  one  family  exquisitely  happy,  instead  of 
two  struggling  against  misery.  I  would  have  made  the 
rose-stem  downy,  and  put  all  the  thorns  on  the  thistles. 
I  would  have  gouged  out  the  jewel  from  the  toad's  head, 
and  given  the  peacock  the  nightingale's  voice,  and  not 
set  everything  so  at  half  and  half. 

But  that  is  the  way  it  is.    We  find  the  world  made  to 
our  hand.     The  wise  men  marry  the  foolish  virgins,  and 
the  splendid  virgins  marry  dolts,  and  matters  in  general 
28  429 


GAIL   HAMILTON 

are  so  mixed  up  that  the  -choice  lies  between  nice  things 
about  spoiled,  and  vile  things  that  are  not  so  bad  after 
all,  and  it  is  hard  to  tell  sometimes  which  you  like  best, 
or  which  you  loathe  least. 

I  expect  to  lose  every  friend  I  have  in  the  world  by 
the  publication  of  this  paper — except  the  dunces  who  are 
impaled  in  it.  They  will  never  read  it,  and  if  they  do,  will 
never  suspect  I  mean  them;  while  the  sensible  and  true 
friends,  who  do  me  good  and  not  evil  all  the  days  of  their 
lives,  will  think  I  am  driving  at  their  noble  hearts,  and 
will  at  once  haul  off  and  leave  me  inconsolable.  Still,  I 
am  going  to  write  it.  You  must  open  the  safety-valve 
once  in  a  while,  even  if  the  steam  does  whiz  and  shriek, 
or  there  will  be  an  explosion,  which  is  fatal,  while  the 
whizzing  and  shrieking  are  only  disagreeable. 

Doubtless  friendship  has  its  advantages  and  its  pleas- 
ures; doubtless  hostility  has  its  isolations  and  its  revenges; 
still,  if  called  upon  to  choose  once  for  all  between  friends 
and  foes,  I  think,  on  the  whole,  I  should  cast  my  vote  for 
the  foes.  Twenty  enemies  will  not  do  you  the  mischief  of 
one  friend.  Enemies  you  always  know  where  to  find. 
They  are  in  fair  and  square  perpetual  hostility,  and  you 
keep  your  armour  on  and  your  sentinels  posted;  but  with 
friends  you  are  inveigled  into  a  false  security,  and,  before 
you  know  it,  your  honour,  your  modesty,  your  delicacy 
are  scudding  before  the  gales.  Moreover,  with  your  friend 
you  can  never  make  reprisals.  If  your  enemy  attacks  you, 
you  can  always  strike  back  and  hit  hard.  You  are  ex- 
pected to  defend  yourself  against  him  to  the  top  of  your 
bent.  He  is  your  legal  opponent  in  honourable  warfare. 
You  can  pour  hot  shot  into  him  with  murderous  vigour, 
and  the  more  he  writhes  the  better  you  feel.  In  fact,  it 
is  rather  refreshing  to  measure  swords  once  in  a  while 
with  such  a  one.  You  like  to  exert  your  power  and  keep 
yourself  in  practice.  You  do  not  rejoice  so  much  in  over- 
coming your  enemy  as  in  overcoming.  If  a  marble  statue 
could  show  fight,  you  would  just  as  soon  fight  it;  but  as 
it  can  not,  you  take  something  that  can,  and  something, 
besides,  that  has  had  the  temerity  to  attack  you,  and  so 
has  made  a  lawful  target  of  itself.  But  against  your  friend 
your  hands  are  tied.  He  has  injured  you.  He  has  dis- 


A   COMPLAINT   OF   FRIENDS 


431 


gusted  you.  He  has  infuriated  you.  But  it  was  most 
Christianly  done.  You  can  not  hurl  a  thunderbolt,  or  pull 
a  trigger,  or  lisp  a  syllable,  against  those  amiable  mon- 
sters who  with  tenderest  fingers  are  sticking  pins  all  over 
you.  So  you  shut  fast  the  doors  of  your  lips,  and  inwardly 
sigh  for  a  good,  stout,  brawny,  malignant  foe,  who,  under 
any  and  every  circumstance,  will  design  you  harm,  and  on 
whom  you  can  lavish  your  lusty  blows  with  a  hearty  will 
and  a  clear  conscience. 

Your  enemy  keeps  clear  of  you.  He  neither  grants 
nor  claims  favours.  He  awards  you  your  rights — no  more, 
no  less — and  demands  the  same  from  you.  Consequently 
there  is  no  friction.  Your  friend,  on  the  contrary,  is  con- 
tinually getting  himself  tangled  up  with  you  "  because  he 
is  your  friend."  I  have  heard  that  Shelley  was  never  better 
pleased  than  when  his  associates  made  free  with  his  coats, 
boots,  and  hats  for  their  own  use,  and  that  he  appropriated 
their  property  in  the  same  way.  Shelley  was  a  poet,  and 
perhaps  idealized  his  friends.  He  saw  them,  probably,  in 
a  state  of  pure  intellect.  I  am  not  a  poet;  I  look  at  people 
in  the  concrete.  The  most  obvious  thing  about  my  friends 
is  their  avoirdupois;  and  I  prefer  that  they  should  wear 
their  own  cloaks  and  suffer  me  to  wear  mine.  There  is  no 
neck  in  the  world  that  I  want  my  collar  to  span  except 
my  own.  It  is  very  exasperating  to  me  to  go  to  my  book- 
case and  miss  a  book  of  which  I  am  in  immediate  and 
pressing  need,  because  an  intimate  friend  has  carried  it 
off  without  asking  leave,  on  the  score  of  his  intimacy.  I 
have  not,  and  do  not  wish  to  have,  any  alliance  that  shall 
abrogate  the  eighth  commandment.  A  great  mistake  is 
lying  round  loose  hereabouts — a  mistake  fatal  to  many 
friendships  that  did  run  well.  The  common  fallacy  is  that 
intimacy  dispenses  with  the  necessity  of  politeness.  The 
truth  is  just  the  opposite  of  this.  The  more  points  of 
contact  there  are,  the  more  danger  of  friction  there  is,  and 
the  more  carefully  should  people  guard  against  it.  If  you 
see  a  man  only  once  a  month,  it  is  not  of  so  vital  impor- 
tance that  you  do  not  trench  on  his  rights,  tastes,  or 
whims.  He  can  bear  to  be  crossed  or  annoyed  occasion- 
ally. If  he  does  not  have  a  very  high  regard  for  you  it 
is  comparatively  unimportant,  because  your  paths  are  gen- 


GAIL   HAMILTON 

erally  so  diverse.  But  you  and  the.  man  with  whom  you 
dine  every  day  have  it  in  your  power  to  make  each  other 
exceedingly  uncomfortable.  A  very  little  dropping  will 
wear  away  rock  if  it  only  keep  at  it.  The  thing  that  you 
would  not  think  of,  if  it  occurred  only  twice  a  year,  be- 
comes an  intolerable  burden  when  it  happens  twice  a  day. 
This  is  where  husbands  and  wives  run  aground.  They 
take  too  much  for  granted.  If  they  would  but  see  that 
they  have  something  to  gain,  something  to  save,  as  well 
as  something  to  enjoy,  it  would  be  better  for  them;  but 
they  proceed  on  the  assumption  that  their  love  is  an  in- 
exhaustible tank,  and  not  a  fountain  depending  for  its 
supply  on  the  stream  that  trickles  into  it.  So,  for  every 
little  annoying  habit,  or  weakness,  or  fault,  they  draw  on 
the  tank,  without  being  careful  to  keep  the  supply  open, 
till  they  awake  one  morning  to  find  the  pump  dry,  and, 
instead  of  love,  at  best,  nothing  but  a  cold  habit  of  com- 
placence. On  the  contrary,  the  more  intimate  friends  be- 
come, whether  married  or  unmarried,  the  more  scrupu- 
lously should  they  strive  to  repress  in  themselves  every- 
thing annoying,  and  to  cherish  both  in  themselves  and 
each  other  everything  pleasing.  While  each  should  draw 
on  his  love  to  neutralize  the  faults  of  his  friend,  it  is  sui- 
cidal to  draw  on  his  friend's  love  to  neutralize  his  own 
faults.  Love  should  be  cumulative,  since  it  can  not  be 
stationary.  If  it  does  not  increase  it  decreases.  Love, 
like  confidence,  is  a  plant  of  slow  growth,  and  of  most 
exotic  fragility.  It  must  be  constantly  and  tenderly  cher- 
ished. Every  noxious  and  foreign  element  must  be 
carefully  removed  from  it.  All  sunshine,  and  sweet  airs, 
and  morning  dews,  and  evening  showers,  must  breathe 
upon  it  perpetual  fragrance,  or  it  dies  into  a  hideous 
and  repulsive  deformity,  fit  only  to  be  cast  out  and  trod- 
den under  foot  of  men,  while,  properly  cultivated,  it  is  a 
Tree  of  Life. 

Your  enemy  keeps  clear  of  you,  not  only  in  business, 
but  in  society.  If  circumstances  thrust  him  into  contact 
with  you,  he  is  curt  and  centrifugal.  But  your  friend 
breaks  in  upon  your  "  saintly  solitude "  with  perfect 
equanimity.  He  never  for  a  moment  harbours  a  suspicion 
that  he  can  intrude,  "  because  he  is  your  friend."  So  he 


A   COMPLAINT   OF   FRIENDS 


433 


drops  in  on  his  way  to  the  office  to  chat  half  an  hour  over 
the  latest  news.  The  half  hour  isn't  much  in  itself.  If  it 
were  after  dinner  you  wouldn't  mind  it;  but  after  break- 
fast every  moment  "  runs  itself  in  golden  sands,"  and  the 
break  in  your  time  crashes  a  worse  break  in  your  temper. 
"  Are  you  busy?  "  asks  the  considerate  wretch,  adding 
insult  to  injury.  What  can  you  do?  Say  yes,  and  wound 
his  self-love  forever?  But  he  has  a  wife  and  family.  You 
respect  their  feelings,  smile  and  smile,  and  are  villain 
enough  to  be  civil  with  your  lips,  and  hide  the  poison  of 
asps  under  your  tongue  till  you  have  a  chance  to  relieve 
your  o'ercharged  heart  by  shaking  your  fist  in  impotent 
wrath  at  his  retreating  form.  You  will  receive  the  reward 
of  your  hypocrisy,  as  you  richly  deserve,  for  ten  to  one 
he  will  drop  in  again  when  he  comes  back  from  his  office, 
and  arrest  you  wandering  in  Dreamland  in  the  beautiful 
twilight.  Delighted  to  find  that  you  are  neither  reading 
nor  writing — the  absurd  dolt!  as  if  a  man  weren't  at  work 
unless  he  be  wielding  a  sledge-hammer! — he  will  preach 
out,  and  prose  out,  and  twaddle  out  another  hour  of  your 
golden  eventide,  "  because  he  is  your  friend."  You  don't 
care  whether  he  is  judge  or  jury — whether  he  talks  sense 
or  nonsense;  you  don't  want  him  to  talk  at  all.  You  don't 
want  him  there  any  way.  You  want  to  be  alone.  If  you 
don't,  why  are  you  sitting  there  in  the  deepening  twilight? 
If  you  wanted  him,  couldn't  you  send  for  him?  Why  don't 
you  go  out  into  the  drawing-room,  where  are  music,  and 
lights,  and  gay  people?  What  right  have  I  to  suppose 
that,  because  you  are  not  using  your  eyes,  you  are  not 
using  your  brain?  What  right  have  I  to  set  myself  up 
as  judge  of  the  value  of  your  time,  and  so  rob  you  of  per- 
haps the  most  delicious  hour  in  all  your  day,  on  pretence 
that  it  is  of  no  use  to  you? — take  a  pound  of  flesh  clean 
out  of  your  heart,  and  trip  on  my  smiling  way  as  if  I 
had  not  earned  the  gallows? 

And  what  in  Heaven's  name  is  the  good  of  all  this 
ceaseless  talk?  To  what  purpose  are  you  wearied,  ex- 
hausted, dragged  out  and  out  to  the  very  extreme  of  tenu- 
ity? A  sprightly  badinage,  a  running  fire  of  nonsense  for 
half  an  hour,  a  tramp  over  unfamiliar  ground  with  a  fa- 
miliar guide,  a  discussion  of  something  with  somebody 


GAIL  HAMILTON 

who  knows  all  about  it,  or  who,  not  knowing,  wants  to 
learn  from  you,  a  pleasant  interchange  of  commonplaces 
with  a  circle  of  friends  around  the  fire,  at  such  hours  as 
you  give  to  society;  all  this  is  not  only  tolerable,  but 
agreeable,  often  positively  delightful;  but  to  have  an  in- 
different person,  on  no  score  but  that  of  friendship,  break 
into  your  sacred  presence,  and  suck  your  blood  through 
indefinite  cycles  of  time,  is  an  abomination.  If  he  clatters 
on  an  indifferent  subject,  you  can  do  well  enough  for 
fifteen  minutes,  buoyed  up  by  the  hope  that  he  will  pres- 
ently have  a  fit,  or  be  sent  for,  or  come  to  some  kind  of 
an  end.  But  when  you  gradually  open  to  the  conviction 
that  vis  inertise  rules  the  hour,  and  the  thing  which  has 
been  is  that  which  shall  be,  you  wax  listless;  your  chariot- 
wheels  drive  heavily;  your  end  of  the  pole  drags  in  the 
mud,  and  you  speedily  wallow  in  unmitigated  disgust.  If 
he  broaches  a  subject  on  which  you  have  a  real  and  deep 
living  interest,  you  shrink  from  unbosoming  yourself  to 
him.  You  feel  that  it  would  be  sacrilege.  He  feels  noth- 
ing of  the  sort.  He  treads  over  your  heart-strings  in  his 
cowhide  brogans,  and  does  not  see  that  they  are  not  whip- 
cords. He  pokes  his  gold-headed  cane  in  among  your 
treasures,  blind  to  the  fact  that  you  are  clutching  both 
arms  around  them,  that  no  gleam  of  flashing  gold  may 
reveal  their  whereabouts  to  him.  You  draw  yourself  up 
in  your  shell,  projecting  a  monosyllabic  claw  occasionally 
as  a  sign  of  continued  vitality;  but  the  pachyderm  does 
not  withdraw,  and  you  gradually  lower  into  an  indignation 
—smothered,  fierce,  intense. 

Why,  why,  why  will  people  inundate  their  unfortunate 
victims  with  such  "weak,  washy,  everlasting  floods"? 
Why  will  they  haul  everything  out  into  the  open  day? 
Why  will  they  make  the  Holy  of  Holies  common  and  un- 
clean? Why  will  they  be  so  ineffably  stupid  as  not  to  see 
that  there  is  that  which  speech  profanes?  Why  will  they 
lower  their  drag-nets  into  the  unfathomable  waters,  in  the 
vain  attempt  to  bring  up  your  pearls  and  gems,  whose 
lustre  would  pale  to  ashes  in  the  garish  light,  whose  only 
sparkle  is  in  the  deep-sea  soundings?  Procul,  O  procul 
este,  profani! 

Oh,  the  matchless  power  of  silence!    There  are  words 


A   COMPLAINT   OF   FRIENDS 


435 


that  concentrate  in  themselves  the  glory  of  a  lifetime,  but 
there  is  a  silence  that  is  more  precious  than  they.  Speech 
ripples  over  the  surface  of  life,  but  silence  sinks  into  its 
depths.  Airy  pleasantnesses  bubble  up  in  airy,  pleasant 
words.  Weak  sorrows  quaver  out  their  shallow  being,  and 
are  not.  When  the  heart  is  cleft  to  its  core,  there  is  no 
speech  nor  language. 

Do  not  now,  Messrs.  Bores,  think  to  retrieve  your 
characters  by  coming  into  my  house  and  sitting  mute  for 
two  hours.  Heaven  forbid  that  your  blood  should  be 
found  on  my  skirts!  but  I  believe  I  shall  kill  you  if  you  do. 
The  only  reason  why  I  have  not  laid  violent  hands  on  you 
heretofore  is  that  your  vapid  talk  has  operated  as  a  wire 
to  conduct  my  electricity  to  the  receptive  and  kindly  earth; 
but  if  you  intrude  upon  my  magnetisms  without  any  such 
life-preserver,  your  future  in  this  world  is  not  worth  a 
crossed  sixpence.  Your  silence  would  break  the  reed  that 
your  talk  but  bruised.  The  only  people  with  whom  it  is 
a  joy  to  sit  silent  are  the  people  with  whom  it  is  a  joy  to 
talk.  Clear  out! 

Friendship  plays  the  mischief  in  the  false  ideas  of  con- 
stancy which  are  generated  and  cherished  in  its  name,  if 
not  by  its  agency.  Your  enemies  are  intense,  but  tem- 
porary. Time  wears  off  the  edge  of  hostility.  It  is  the 
alembic  in  which  offences  are  dissolved  into  thin  air,  and 
a  calm  indifference  reigns  in  their  stead.  But  your  friends 
are  expected  to  be  a  permanent  arrangement.  They  are 
not  only  a  sore  evil,  but  of  long  continuance.  Adhesive- 
ness seems  to  be  the  head  and  front,  the  bones  and  blood, 
of  their  creed.  It  is  not  the  direction  of  the  quality,  but 
the  quality  itself,  which  they  swear  by.  Only  stick,  it  is 
no  matter  what  you  stick  to.  Fall  out  with  a  man,  and 
you  can  kiss  and  be  friends  as  soon  as  you  like;  the  re- 
cording angel  will  set  it  down  on  the  credit  side  of  his 
books.  Fall  in,  and  you  are  expected  to  stay  in,  ad  in- 
finitum,  ad  nauseam.  No  matter  what  combination  of 
laws  got  you  there,  there  you  are,  and  there  you  must  stay, 
for  better,  for  worse,  till  merciful  Death  you  do  part — or 
you  are — "  fickle."  You  find  a  man  entertaining  for  an 
hour,  a  week,  a  concert,  a  journey,  and  presto!  you  are 
saddled  with  him  forever.  What  preposterous  absurdity! 


436 


GAIL   HAMILTON 


Do  but  look  at  it  calmly.  You  are  thrown  into  contact 
with  a  person,  and,  as  in  duty  bound,  you  proceed  to 
fathom  him,  for  every  man  is  a  possible  revelation.  In 
the  deeps  of  his  soul  there  may  lie  unknown  worlds  for 
you.  Consequently  you  proceed  at  once  to  experiment 
on  him.  It  takes  a  little  while  to  get  your  tackle  in  order. 
Then  the  line  begins  to  run  off  rapidly,  and  your  eager 
soul  cries  out:  "  Ah!  what  depth!  What  perpetual  calmness 
must  be  down  below!  What  rest  is  here  for  all  my  tumult! 
What  a  grand,  vast  nature  is  this!"  Surely,  surely,  you 
are  on  the  high  seas.  Surely,  you  will  now  float  serenely 
down  the  eternities!  But  by-and-bye  there  is  a  kink.  You 
find  that,  though  the  line  runs  off  so  fast,  it  does  not  go 
down — it  only  floats  out.  A  current  has  caught  it  and 
bears  it  on  horizontally.  It  does  not  sink  plumb.  You 
have  been  deceived.  Your  grand  Pacific  Ocean  is  noth- 
ing but  a  shallow  little  brook,  that  you  can  ford  all  the 
year  round,  if  it  does  not  utterly  dry  up  in  the  summer 
heats,  when  you  want  it  most;  or,  at  best,  it  is  a  fussy 
little  tormenting  river,  that  won't  and  can't  sail  a  sloop. 
What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it?  You  are  going  to 
wind  up  your  lead  and  line,  shoulder  your  birch  canoe,  as 
the  old  sea-kings  used,  and  thrid  the  deep  forests,  and  scale 
the  purple  hills,  till  you  come  to  water  again,  when  you 
will  unroll  your  lead  and  line  for  another  essay.  Is  that 
fickleness?  What  else  can  you  do?  Must  you  launch 
your  bark  on  the  unquiet  stream,  against  whose  pebbly 
bottom  the  keel  continually  grates  and  rasps  your  nerves, 
simply  that  your  reputation  suffer  no  detriment?  Fickle- 
ness? There  was  no  fickleness  about  it.  You  were  trying 
an  experiment  which  you  had  every  right  to  try.  As  soon 
as  you  were  satisfied  you  stopped.  If  you  had  stopped 
sooner  you  would  have  been  unsatisfied.  If  you  had 
stopped  later  you  would  have  been  dissatisfied.  It  is  a 
criminal  contempt  of  the  magnificent  possibilities  of  life 
not  to  lay  hold  of  "  God's  occasions  floating  by."  It  is  an 
equally  criminal  perversion  of  them  to  cling  tenaciously 
to  what  was  only  the  simulacrum  of  an  occasion.  A  man 
will  toil  many  days  and  nights  among  the  mountains  to 
find  an  ingot  of  gold,  which,  found,  he  bears  home  with 
infinite  pains  and  just  rejoicing;  but  he  would  be  a  fool 


A   COMPLAINT   OF   FRIENDS 


437 


who  should  lade  his  mules  with  iron  pyrites  to  justify  his 
labours,  however  severe. 

Fickleness!  what  is  it,  that  we  make  such  an  ado  about 
it?  And  what  is  constancy,  that  it  commands  such  usuri- 
ous interest?  The  one  is  a  foible  only  in  its  relations.  The 
other  is  only  thus  a  virtue.  "  Fickle  as  the  winds  "  is  our 
death-seal  upon  a  man;  but  should  we  like  our  winds  un- 
fkkle?  Would  a  perpetual  northeaster  lay  us  open  to 
perpetual  gratitude?  or  is  a  soft  south  gale  to  be  orisoned 
and  vespered  forevermore? 

I  am  tired  of  this  eternal  prating  of  devotion  and  con- 
stancy. It  is  senseless  in  itself  and  harmful  in  its  tend- 
encies. The  dictate  of  reason  is  to  treat  men  and  women 
as  we  do  oranges.  Suck  all  the  juice  out  and  then  let 
them  go.  Where  is  the  good  of  keeping  the  peel  and  pulp- 
cells  till  they  get  old,  dry,  and  mouldy?  Let  them  go, 
and  they  will  help  feed  the  earthworms  and  bugs  and 
beetles,  who  can  hardly  find  existence  a  continued  ban- 
quet, and  fertilize  the  earth  which  will  have  you  give  be- 
fore you  receive.  Thus  they  will  ultimately  spring  up  in 
new  and  beautiful  shapes.  Clung  to  with  constancy,  they 
stain  your  knife  and  napkin,  impart  a  bad  odour  to  your 
dining  room,  and  degenerate  into  something  that  is  neither 
pleasant  to  the  eye  nor  good  for  food.  I  believe  in  a  rota- 
tion of  crops,  morally  and  socially,  as  well  as  agriculturally. 
When  you  have  taken  the  measure  of  a  man,  when  you 
have  sounded  him  and  know  that  you  can  not  wade  in 
him  more  than  ankle-deep,  when  you  have  got  out  of  him 
all  that  he  has  to  yield  for  your  soul's  sustenance  and 
strength,  what  is  the  next  thing  to  be  done?  Obviously, 
pass  him  on;  and  turn  you  "  to  fresh  woods  and  pastures 
new."  Do  you  work  him  an  injury?  By  no  means. 
Friends  that  are  simply  glued  on,  and  don't  grow  out  of, 
are  little  worth.  He  has  nothing  more  for  you,  nor  you 
for  him;  but  he  may  be  rich  in  juices  wherewithal  to  nour- 
ish the  heart  of  another  man,  and  their  two  lives,  set  to- 
gether, may  have  an  endosmose  and  exosmose  whose  result 
shall  be  richness  of  soil,  grandeur  of  growth,  beauty  of 
foliage,  and  perfectness  of  fruit;  while  you  and  he  would 
only  have  languished  into  aridity  and  a  stunted  crab-tree. 

For  my  part,  I  desire  to  sweep  off  my  old  friends  with 


438 


GAIL   HAMILTON 


the  old  year,  and  begin  the  new  with  a  clean  record.  It 
is  a  measure  absolutely  necessary.  The  snake  does  not 
put  on  his  new  skin  over  the  old  one.  He  sloughs  off  the 
first,  before  he  dons  the  second.  He  would  be  a  very 
clumsy  serpent  if  he  did  not.  One  can  not  have  successive 
layers  of  friendships  any  more  than  the  snake  has  succes- 
sive layers  of  skins.  One  must  adopt  some  system  to  guard 
against  a  congestion  of  the  heart  from  plethora  of  loves. 
I  go  in  for  the  much-abused,  fair-weather,  skin-deep,  April- 
shower  friends — the  friends  who  will  drop  off  if  let  alone; 
who  must  be  kept  awake  to  be  kept  at  all;  who  will  talk 
and  laugh  with  you  as  long  as  it  suits  your  respective 
humours  and  you  are  prosperous  and  happy;  the  blessed 
butterfly  race  who  flutter  about  you  June  mornings,  and 
when  the  clouds  lower,  vand  the  drops  patter,  and  the 
rains  descend,  and  the  winds  blow,  will  spread  their  gay 
wings  and  float  gracefully  away  to  sunny  southern  lands, 
where  the  skies  are  yet  blue  and  the  breezes  violet- 
scented.  They  are  not  only  agreeable,  but  deeply  wise. 
So  long  as  a  man  keeps  his  streamer  flying,  his  sails  set, 
and  his  hull  above  water,  it  is  pleasant  to  paddle  along- 
side; but  when  the  sails  split,  the  yards  crack,  and  the 
keel  goes  staggering  down,  by  all  means  paddle  off.  Why 
should  you  be  submerged  in  his  whirlpool?  Will  he  drown 
any  more  easily  because  you  are  drowning  with  him? 
Lung  is  lung.  He  dies  from  want  of  air,  not  from  want 
of  sympathy.  When  a  poor  fellow  sits  down  among  the 
ashes,  the  best  thing  his  friends  can  do  is  to  stand  afar 
off.  Job  bore  the  loss  of  property,  children,  health,  with 
equanimity.  Satan  himself  found  his  match  there;  and 
for  all  his  buffetings,  Job  sinned  not,  nor  charged  God 
foolishly.  But  Job's  three  friends  must  needs  make  an 
appointment  together  to  come  and  mourn  with  him  and  to 
comfort  him,  and  after  this  Job  opened  his  mouth,  and 
cursed  his  day — and  no  wonder. 

Your  friends  have  an  intimate  knowledge  of  you  that 
is  astonishing  to  contemplate.  It  is  not  that  they  know 
your  affairs,  which  he  who  runs  may  read,  but  they  know 
you.  From  a  bit  of  bone,  Cuvier  could  predicate  a  whole 
animal,  even  to  the  hide  and  hair.  Such  moral  naturalists 
are  your  dear  five  hundred  friends.  It  seems  to  yourself 


A   COMPLAINT  OF   FRIENDS 


439 


that  you  are  immeasurably  reticent.  You  know,  of  a  cer- 
tainty, that  you  project  only  the  smallest  possible  frag- 
ment of  yourself.  You  yield  your  university  to  the  bond 
of  common  brotherhood;  but  your  individualism — what  it 
is  that  makes  you  you — withdraws  itself  naturally,  invol- 
untarily, inevitably,  into  the  background,  the  dim  distance 
which  their  eyes  can  not  penetrate.  But,  from  the  fraction 
which  you  do  project,  they  construct  another  you,  call  it 
by  your  name,  and  pass  it  around  for  the  real,  the  actual 
you.  You  bristle  with  jest  and  laughter  and  wild  whims, 
to  keep  them  at  a  distance,  and  they  fancy  this  to  be 
your  everyday  equipment.  They  think  your  life  holds 
constant  carnival.  It  is  astonishing  what  ideas  spring  up 
in  the  heads  of  sensible  people.  There  are  those  who 
assume  that  a  person  can  never  have  had  any  grief,  unless 
somebody  has  died,  or  he  has  been  disappointed  in  love, 
not  knowing  that  every  avenue  of  joy  lies  open  to  the 
tramp  of  pain.  They  see  the  flashing  coronet  on  the 
queen's  brow,  and  they  infer  a  diamond  woman,  not  reck- 
ing of  the  human  heart  that  throbs  wildly  out  of  sight. 
They  see  the  foam-crest  on  the  wave,  and  picture  an  At- 
lantic Ocean  of  froth,  and  not  the  solemn  sea  that  stands 
below  in  eternal  equipoise.  You  turn  to  them  the  lumi- 
nous crescent  of  your  life,  and  they  call  it  the  whole  round 
globe;  and  so  they  love  you  with  a  love  that  is  agate,  not 
pearl,  because  what  they  love  in  you  is  something  in- 
finitely below  the  highest.  They  love  you  level;  they  have 
never  scaled  your  heights  nor  fathomed  your  depths.  And 
when  they  talk  of  you  as  familiarly  as  if  they  had  taken 
out  your  auricles  and  ventricles,  and  turned  them  inside 
out,  and  wrung  them,  and  shaken  them;  when  they  prate 
of  your  transparency  and  openness,  the  abandonment  with 
which  you  draw  aside  the  curtain  and  reveal  the  inmost 
thoughts  of  your  heart,  you,  who  are  to  yourself  a  miracle 
and  a  mystery,  you  smile  inwardly,  and  are  content.  They 
are  on  the  wrong  scent,  and  you  may  pursue  your  plans  in 
peace.  They  are  indiscriminate  and  satisfied.  They  do 
not  know  the  relation  of  what  appears  to  what  is.  If  they 
chance  to  skirt  along  the  coasts  of  your  Purple  Island,  it 
will  be  only  chance,  and  they  will  not  know  it.  You  may 
close  your  portholes,  lower  your  drawbridge,  and  make 


440  GAIL   HAMILTON 

merry,  for  they  will  never  come  within  gunshot  of  the 
"  Round  Tower  of  your  heart/' 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  knowing  a  man  intimately. 
Every  soul  is,  for  the  greater  part  of  its  mortal  life,  isolated 
from  every  other.  Whether  it  dwell  in  the  Garden  of 
Eden  or  the  Desert  of  Sahara,  it  dwells  alone.  Not  only 
do  we  jostle  against  the  street  crowd  unknowingly  and 
unknown,  but  we  go  out  and  come  in,  we  lie  down  and 
rise  up,  with  strangers.  Jupiter  and  Neptune  sweep  the 
heavens  not  more  unfamiliar  to  us  than  the  worlds  that 
circle  our  own  hearthstone.  Day  after  day,  and  year  after 
year,  a  person  moves  by  your  side;  he  sits  at  the  same 
table;  he  reads  the  same  books;  he  kneels  in  the  same 
church.  You  know  every  hair  of  his  head,  every  trick  of 
his  lips,  every  tone  of  his  voice;  you  can  tell  him  far  off 
by  his  gait.  Without  seeing  him  you  recognise  his  step, 
his  knock,  his  laugh.  "  Know  him?  Yes,  I  have  known 
him  these  twenty  years."  No,  you  don't  know  him.  You 
know  his  gait,  and  hair,  and  voice.  You  know  what 
preacher  he  hears,  what  ticket  he  voted,  and  what  were  his 
last  year's  expenses;  but  you  don't  know  him.  He  sits 
quietly  in  his  chair,  but  he  is  in  the  temple.  You  speak 
to  him;  his  soul  comes  out  into  the  vestibule  to  answer 
you,  and  returns — and  the  gates  are  shut;  therein  you  can 
not  enter.  You  were  discussing  the  state  of  the  country; 
but  when  you  ceased  he  opened  a  postern-gate,  went  down 
a  bank,  and  launched  on  a  sea  over  whose  waters  you  have 
no  boat  to  sail,  no  star  to  guide.  You  have  loved  and  rev- 
erenced him.  He  has  been  your  concrete  of  truth  and 
nobleness.  Unwittingly  you  touch  a  secret  spring,  and  a 
Bluebeard  Chamber  stands  revealed.  You  give  no  sign; 
you  meet  and  part  as  usual;  but  a  Dead  Sea  rolls  between 
you  two  forevermore. 

It  must  be  so.  Not  even  to  the  nearest  and  dearest 
can  one  unveil  the  secret  place  where  his  soul  abideth,  so 
that  there  shall  be  no  more  any  winding  ways  or  hidden 
chambers;  but  to  your  indifferent  neighbour,  what  blind 
alleys,  and  deep  caverns,  and  inaccessible  mountains!  To 
him  who  "  touches  the  electric  chain  wherewith  you're 
darkly  bound,"  your  soul  sends  back  an  answering  thrill. 
One  little  window  is  opened,  and  there  is  short  parley. 


A   COMPLAINT   OF   FRIENDS 


441 


Your  ships  speak  each  other  now  and  then  in  welcome 
though  imperfect  communication;  but  immediately  you 
strike  out  again  into  the  great,  shoreless  sea,  over  which 
you  must  sail  forever  alone.  You  may  shrink  from  the 
far-reaching  solitudes  of  your  heart,  but  no  other  foot  than 
yours  can  tread  them,  save  those 

"  That,  eighteen  hundred  years  ago,  were  nailed, 
For  our  advantage,  to  the  bitter  cross." 

Be  thankful  that  it  is  so — that  only  His  eye  sees  whose 
hand  formed.  If  we  could  look  in,  we  should  be  appalled 
at  the  vision.  The  worlds  that  glide  around  us  are  mys- 
teries too  high  for  us.  We  can  not  attain  to  them.  The 
naked  soul  is  a  sight  too  awful  for  man  to  look  at  and 
live.  There  are  individuals  whose  topography  we  would 
like  to  know  a  little  better,  and  there  is  danger  that  we 
crash  against  each  other  while  roaming  around  in  the 
dark;  but,  for  all  that,  would  we  not  have  the  constitu- 
tion broken  up.  Somebody  says,  "  In  heaven  there  will 
be  no  secrets,"  which,  it  seems  to  me,  would  be  intolerable. 
(If  that  were  a  revelation  from  the  King  of  Heaven,  of 
course  I  would  not  speak  flippantly  of  it;  but  though  to- 
ward heaven  we  look  with  reverence  and  humble  hope,  I 
do  not  know  that  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry's  notions  of  it 
have  any  special  claim  to  our  respect.)  Such  publicity 
would  destroy  all  individuality,  and  undermine  the  founda- 
tions of  society.  Clairvoyance — if  there  be  any  such  thing 
— always  seemed  to  me  a  stupid  impertinence.  When 
people  pay  visits  to  me,  I  wish  them  to  come  to  the  front 
door,  and  ring  the  bell,  and  send  up  their  names.  I  don't 
wish  them  to  climb  in  at  the  window,  or  creep  through  the 
pantry,  or,  worst  of  all,  float  through  the  keyhole,  and 
catch  me  in  undress.  So  I  believe  that  in  all  worlds 
thoughts  will  be  the  subjects  of  volition;  more  accurately 
expressed  when  expression  is  desired,  but  just  as  entirely 
suppressed  when  we  will  suppression. 

After  all,  perhaps  the  chief  trouble  arises  from  a  preva- 
lent confusion  of  ideas  as  to  what  constitutes  a  man  your 
friend.  Friendship  may  stand  for  that  peaceful  compla- 
cence which  you  feel  toward  all  well-behaved  people  who 
wear  clean  collars  and  use  tolerable  grammar.  This  is  a 


GAIL   HAMILTON 

very  good  meaning,  if  everybody  will  subscribe  to  it.  But 
sundry  of  these  well-behaved  people  will  mistake  your 
civility  and  complacence  for  a  recognition  of  special  affin- 
ity, and  proceed  at  once  to  frame  an  alliance  offensive  and 
defensive  while  the  sun  and  the  moon  shall  endure.  Oh, 
the  barnacles  that  cling  to  your  keel  in  such  waters!  The 
inevitable  result  is  that  they  win  your  intense  rancour.  You 
would  feel  a  genial  kindliness  toward  them  if  they  would 
be  satisfied  with  that;  but  they  lay  out  to  be  your  spe- 
cialty. They  infer  your  innocent  little  inch  to  be  the 
standard-bearer  of  twenty  ells,  and  goad  you  to  frenzy. 
I  mean  you,  you  desperate  little  horror,  who  nearly  de- 
throned my  reason  six  years  ago!  I  always  meant  to  have 
my  revenge,  and  here  I  impale  you  before  the  public. 
For  three  months  you  fastened  yourself  upon  me,  and  I 
could  not  shake  you  off.  What  availed  it  me,  that  you 
were  an  honest  and  excellent  man?  Did  I  not,  twenty 
times  a  day,  wish  you  had  been  a  villain,  who  had  insulted 
me,  and  I  a  Kentucky  giant,  that  I  might  have  the  un- 
speakable satisfaction  of  knocking  you  down?  But  you 
added  to  your  crimes  virtue.  Villainy  had  no  part  or  lot 
in  you.  You  were  a  member  of  a  church,  in  good  and 
regular  standing;  you  had  graduated  with  all  the  honours 
worth  mentioning;  you  had  not  a  sin,  a  vice,  or  a  fault 
that  I  knew  of;  and  you  were  so  thoroughly  good  and  re- 
pulsive that  you  were  a  great  grief  to  me.  Do  you  think, 
you  dear,  disinterested  wretch,  that  I  have  forgotten  how 
you  were  continually  putting  yourself  to  horrible  incon- 
veniences on  my  account?  Do  you  think  I  am  not  now 
filled  with  remorse  for  the  aversion  that  rooted  itself  in- 
eradicably  in  my  soul,  and  which  now  gloats  over  you 
as  you  stand  in  the  pillory  where  my  own  hands  have  fas- 
tened you?  But  can  Nature  be  crushed  forever?  Did  I 
not  ruin  my  nerves,  and  seriously  injure  my  temper,  by 
the  overpowering  pressure  I  laid  upon  them  to  keep  them 
quiet  when  you  were  by?  Could  I  not,  by  the  sense  of 
coming  ill  through  all  my  quivering  frame,  presage  your 
advent  as  exactly  as  the  barometer  heralds  the  approach- 
ing storm?  Those  three  months  of  agony  are  little  atoned 
for  by  this  late  vengeance;  but  go  in  peace! 

Mysterious  are  the  ways  of  friendship.    It  is  not  a  mat- 


A   COMPLAINT   OF   FRIENDS  443 

ter  of  reason  or  of  choice,  but  of  magnetisms.  You  can 
not  always  give  the  premises  nor  the  argument,  but  the 
conclusion  is  a  palpable  and  stubborn  fact.  Abana  and 
Pharpar  may  be  broad,  and  deep,  and  blue,  and  grand; 
but  only  in  Jordan  shall  your  soul  wash  and  be  clean.  A 
thousand  brooks  are  born  of  the  sunshine  and  the  moun- 
tains; very,  very  few  are  they  whose  flow  can  mingle  with 
yours,  and  not  disturb,  but  only  deepen  and  broaden  the 
current. 

Your  friend!  Who  shall  describe  him,  or  worthily 
paint  what  he  is  to  you?  No  merchant,  nor  lawyer,  nor 
farmer,  nor  statesman,  claims  your  suffrage,  but  a  kingly 
soul.  He  comes  to  you  from  God — a  prophet,  a  seer,  a  re- 
vealer.  He  has  a  clear  vision.  His  love  is  reverence.  He 
goes  into  the  penetralia  of  your  life,  not  presumptuously, 
but  with  uncovered  head,  unsandalled  feet,  and  pours  liba- 
tions at  the  innermost  shrine.  His  incense  is  grateful.  For 
him  the  sunlight  brightens,  the  skies  grow  rosy,  and  all  the 
days  are  Junes.  Wrapped  in  his  love,  you  float  in  a  deli- 
cious rest,  rocked  in  the  bosom  of  purple,  scented  waves. 
Nameless  melodies  sing  themselves  through  your  heart. 
A  golden  glow  suffuses  your  atmosphere.  A  vague,  fine 
ecstasy  thrills  to  the  sources  of  life,  and  earth  lays  hold 
on  heaven.  Such  friendship  is  worship.  It  elevates  the 
most  trifling  services  into  rites.  The  humblest  offices  are 
sanctified.  All  things  are  baptized  into  a  new  name.  Duty 
is  lost  in  joy.  Care  veils  itself  in  caresses.  Drudgery  be- 
comes delight.  There  is  no  longer  anything  menial,  small, 
or  servile.  All  is  transformed 

"  Into  something  rich  and  strange." 

The  homely  household  ways  lead  through  beds  of  spices 
and  orchards  of  pomegranates.  The  daily  toil  among  your 
parsnips  and  carrots  is  plucking  May  violets  with  the  dew 
upon  them  to  meet  the  eyes  you  love  upon  their  first 
awaking.  In  the  burden  and  heat  of  the  day  you  hear  the 
rustling  of  summer  showers  and  the  whispering  of  sum- 
mer winds.  Everything  is  lifted  up  from  the  plane  of 
labour  to  the  plane  of  love,  and  a  glory  spans  your  life. 
With  your  friend,  speech  and  silence  are  one;  for  a  com- 
munion mysterious  and  intangible  reaches  across  from 


GAIL   HAMILTON 

heart  to  heart.  The  many  dig  and  delve  in  your  nature 
with  fruitless  toil  to  find  the  spring  of  living  water;  he 
only  raises  his  wand,  and,  obedient  to  the  hidden  power, 
it  bends  at  once  to  your  secret.  Your  friendship,  though 
independent  of  language,  gives  to  it  life  and  light.  The 
mystic  spirit  stirs  even  in  commonplaces,  and  the  merest 
question  is  an  endearment.  You  are  quiet  because  your 
heart  is  overfull.  You  talk  because  it  is  pleasant,  not  be- 
cause you  have  anything  to  say.  You  weary  of  terms  that 
are  already  love-laden,  and  you  go  out  into  the  high- 
ways and  hedges,  and  gather  up  the  rough,  wild,  wilful 
words,  heavy  with  the  hatreds  of  men,  and  filt  them  to 
the  brim  with  honey-dew.  All  things,  great  and  small, 
grand  or  humble,  you  press  into  your  service,  force 
them  to  do  soldier's  duty,  and  your  banner  over  them 
is  love. 

With  such  a  friendship,  presence  alone  is  happiness; 
nor  is  absence  wholly  void,  for  memories,  and  hopes,  and 
pleasing  fancies  sparkle  through  the  hours,  and  you  know 
the  sunshine  will  come  back. 

For  such  friendship  one  is  grateful.  No  matter  that  it 
comes  unsought,  and  comes  not  for  the  seeking.  You  do 
not  discuss  the  reasonableness  of  your  gratitude.  You 
only  know  that  your  whole  being  bows  with  humility  and 
utter  thankfulness  to  him  who  thus  crowns  you  monarch 
of  all  realms. 

And  the  kingdom  is  everlasting.  A  weak  love  dies 
weakly  with  the  occasion  that  gave  it  birth;  but  such 
friendship  is  born  of  the  gods,  and  immortal.  Clouds  and 
darkness  may  sweep  around  it,  but  within  the  cloud  the 
glory  lives  undimmed.  Death  has  no  power  over  it. 
Time  can  not  diminish,  nor  even  dishonour  annul  it.  Its 
direction  may  have  been  earthly,  but  itself  is  divine.  You 
go  back  into  your  solitudes;  all  is  silent  as  aforetime,  but 
you  can  not  forget  that  a  Voice  once  resounded  there.  A 
Presence  filled  the  valleys  and  gilded  the  mountain  tops; 
breathed  upon  the  plains,  and  they  sprang  up  in  lilies  and 
roses;  flashed  upon  the  waters,  and  they  flowed  to  spheral 
melody — swept  through  the  forests,  and  they,  too,  trembled 
into  song.  And  though  now  the  warmth  has  faded  out, 
though  the  ruddy  tints  and  amber  clearness  have  paled  to 


A   COMPLAINT   OF   FRIENDS  445 

ashen  hues,  though  the  murmuring  melodies  are  dead,  and 
forest,  vale,  and  hill  look  hard  and  angular  in  the  sharp 
air,  you  know  that  it  is  not  death.  The  fire  is  unquenched 
beneath.  You  go  your  way  not  disconsolate.  There  needs 
but  the  Victorious  Voice.  At  the  touch  of  the  Prince's 
lips,  life  shall  rise  against  and  be  perfected  forevermore. 


THE  PAGEANT  OF  SUMMER 


BY 

RICHARD   JEFFERIES 


JOHN  RICHARD  JEFFERIES  was  born  near  Swindon,  Wiltshire,  Eng- 
land, November  6,  1848.  He  adopted  journalism  as  a  profession,  arid 
spent  his  leisure  time  in  writing  novels,  none  of  which  were  successful. 
But  when  he  removed  to  London  and  devoted  his  pen  to  rural  and  agri- 
cultural topics  he  found  his  true  place  and  won  quick  recognition.  The 
titles  of  most  of  his  books  indicate  their  character.  They  are,  "The 
Gamekeeper  at  Home,"  "Wild  Life  in  a  Southern  County,"  "The 
Amateur  Poacher,"  "  Round  about  a  Great  Estate,"  "Nature  near  Lon- 
don," "  Life  of  the  Fields,"  "  Red  Deer,"  and  "  The  Open  Air."  He  also 
wrote  a  romance  of  the  future,  entitled  "After  London,  or  Wild  Eng- 
land," and  "The  Story  of  my  Heart,"  a  singular  autobiography.  He 
wrote  of  Nature  and  wild  life  with  minute  observation  in  a  reverent 
spirit  and  with  a  poetical  style  that  have  gained  enthusiastic  admirers 
for  his  work.  He  died  August  14,  1887.  His  life  has  been  written  by 
H.  S.  Salt. 


THE   PAGEANT  OF  SUMMER 


GREEN  rushes,  long  and  thick,  standing  up  above 
the  edge  of  the  ditch,  told  the  hour  of  the  year  as 
distinctly  as  the  shadow  on  the  dial  the  hour  of  the 
day.  Green  and  thick  and  sappy  to  the  touch,  they  felt 
like  summer,  soft  and  elastic,  as  if  full  of  life,  mere  rushes 
though  they  were.  On  the  fingers  they  left  a  green  scent; 
rushes  have  a  separate  scent  of  green;  so,  too,  have  ferns, 
very  different  to  that  of  grass  or  leaves.  Rising  from 
brown  sheaths,  the  tall  stems,  enlarged  a  little  in  the  mid- 
dle, like  classical  columns,  and  heavy  with  their  sap  and 
freshness,  leaned  against  the  hawthorn  sprays.  From  the 
earth  they  had  drawn  its  moisture,  and  made  the  ditch  dry; 
some  of  the  sweetness  of  the  air  had  entered  into  their 
fibres,  and  the  rushes — the  common  rushes — were  full  of 
beautiful  summer.  The  white  pollen  of  early  grasses 
growing  on  the  edge  was  dusted  from  them  each  time  the 
hawthorn  boughs  were  shaken  by  a  thrush.  These  lower 
sprays  came  down  in  among  the  grass,  and  leaves  and 
grass-blades  touched.  Smooth,  round  stems  of  angelica,, 
big  as  a  gun-barrel,  hollow  and  strong,  stood  on  the  slope 
of  the  mound,  their  tiers  of  well-balanced  branches  rising 
like  those  of  a  tree.  Such  a  sturdy  growth  pushed  back 
the  ranks  of  hedge  parsley  in  full  white  flower,  which 
blocked  every  avenue  and  winding  bird's  path  of  the  bank. 
But  the  "  gix,"  or  wild  parsnip,  reached  already  high  above 
both,  and  would  rear  its  fluted  stalk,  joint  on  joint,  till  it 
could  face  a  man.  Trees  they  were  to  the  lesser  birds,  not 
even  bending  if  perched  on;  but  though  so  stout,  the 
birds  did  not  place  their  nests  on  or  against  them.  Some- 
thing in  the  odour  of  these  umbelliferous  plants,  perhaps, 
is  not  quite  liked;  if  brushed  or  bruised  they  give  out  a 

449 


450 


JEFFERIES 


bitter  greenish  scent.  Under  their  cover,  well  shaded  and 
hidden,  birds  build,  but  not  against  or  on  the  stems, 
though  they  will  affix  their  nests  to  much  less  certain  sup- 
ports. With  the  grasses  that  overhung  the  edge,  with  the 
rushes  in  the  ditch  itself,  and  these  great  plants  on  the 
mound,  the  whole  hedge  was  wrapped  and  thickened.  No 
cunning  of  glance  could  see  through  it;  it  would  have 
needed  a  ladder  to  help  any  one  look  over. 

It  was  between  the  May  and  the  June  roses.  The  May 
bloom  had  fallen,  and  among  the  hawthorn  boughs  were 
the  little  green  bunches  that  would  feed  the  redwings  in 
autumn.  High  up  the  briers  had  climbed,  straight  and 
towering  while  there  was  a  thorn  or  an  ash  sapling,  or  a 
yellow-green  willow,  to  uphold  them,  and  then  curving 
over  toward  the  meadow.  The  buds  were  on  them,  but 
not  yet  open;  it  was  between  the  May  and  the  rose. 

As  the  wind,  wandering  over  the  sea,  takes  from  each 
wave  an  invisible  portion,  and  brings  to  those  on  shore  the 
ethereal  essence  of  ocean,  so  the  air  lingering  among  the 
woods  and  hedges — green  waves  and  billows — became  full 
of  fine  atoms  of  summer.  Swept  from  notched  hawthorn 
leaves,  broad-topped  oak  leaves,  narrow  ash  sprays  and 
oval  willows;  from  vast  elm  cliffs  and  sharp-taloned 
brambles  under;  brushed  from  the  waving  grasses  and  stiff- 
ening corn,  the  dust  of  the  sunshine  was  borne  along  and 
breathed.  Steeped  in  flower  and  pollen  to  the  music  of 
bees  and  birds,  the  stream  of  the  atmosphere  became  a 
living  thing.  It  was  life  to  breathe  it,  for  the  air  itself 
was  life.  The  strength  of  the  earth  went  up  through  the 
leaves  into  the  wind.  Fed  thus  on  the  food  of  the  Im- 
mortals, the  heart  opened  to  the  width  and  depth  of  the 
summer — to  the  broad  horizon  afar,  down  to  the  minutest 
creature  in  the  grass,  up  to  the  highest  swallow.  Winter 
shows  us  Matter  in  its  dead  form,  like  the  primary  rocks, 
like  granite  and  basalt — clear  but  cold  and  frozen  crystal. 
Summer  shows  us  Matter  changing  into  life,  sap  rising 
from  the  earth  through  a  million  tubes,  the  alchemic  power 
of  light  entering  the  solid  oak;  and  see!  it  bursts  forth  in 
countless  leaves.  Living  things  leap  in  the  grass,  living 
things  drift  upon  the  air,  living  things  are  coming  forth  to 
breathe  in  every  hawthorn  bush.  No  longer  does  the  im- 


THE   PAGEANT   OF   SUMMER  45! 

mense  weight  of  Matter — the  dead,  the  crystallized — press 
ponderously  on  the  thinking  mind.  The  whole  office  of 
Matter  is  to  feed  life — to  feed  the  green  rushes,  and  the 
roses  that  are  about  to  be;  to  feed  the  swallows  above, 
and  us  that  wander  beneath  them.  So  much  greater  is  this 
green  and  common  rush  than  all  the  Alps. 

Fanning  so  swiftly,  the  wasp's  wings  are  but  just 
visible  as  he  passes;  did  he  pause,  the  light  would  be  ap- 
parent through  their  texture.  On  the  wings  of  the  drag- 
on-fly as  he  hovers  an  instant  before  he  darts  there  is  a 
prismatic  gleam.  These  wing  textures  are  even  more 
delicate  than  the  minute  filaments  on  a  swallow's  quill, 
more  delicate  than  the  pollen  of  a  flower.  They  are 
formed  of  matter  indeed,  but  how  exquisitely  it  is  resolved 
into  the  means  and  organs  of  life!  Though  not  often  con- 
sciously recognised,  perhaps  this  is  the  great  pleasure  of 
summer,  to  watch  the  earth,  the  dead  particles,  resolving 
themselves  into  the  living  case  of  life,  to  see  the  seed-leaf 
push  aside  the  clod  and  become  by  degrees  the  perfumed 
flower.  From  the  tiny,  mottled  egg  come  the  wings  that 
by-and-by  shall  pass  the  immense  sea.  It  is  in  this  marvel- 
lous transformation  of  clods  and  cold  matter  into  living 
things  that  the  joy  and  the  hope  of  summer  reside.  Every 
blade  of  grass,  each  leaf,  each  separate  floret  and  petal  is  an 
inscription  speaking  of  hope.  Consider  the  grasses  and  the 
oaks,  the  swallows,  the  sweet  blue  butterfly — they  are  one 
and  all  a  sign  and  token  showing  before  our  eyes  earth 
made  into  life.  So  that  my  hope  becomes  as  broad  as  the 
horizon  afar,  reiterated  by  every  leaf,  sung  on  every  bough, 
reflected  in  the  gleam  of  every  flower.  There  is  so  much 
for  us  yet  to  come,  so  much  to  be  gathered,  and  enjoyed. 
Not  for  you  or  me,  now,  but  for  our  race,  who  will  ulti- 
mately use  this  magical  secret  for  their  happiness.  Earth 
holds  secrets  enough  to  give  them  the  life  of  the  fabled 
Immortals.  My  heart  is  fixed  firm  and  stable  in  the  be- 
lief that  ultimately  the  sunshine  and  the  summer,  the 
flowers  and  the  azure  sky,  shall  become,  as  it  were,  inter- 
woven into  man's  existence.  He  shall  take  from  all  their 
beauty  and  enjoy  their  glory.  Hence  it  is  that  a  flower 
is  to  me  so  much  more  than  stalk  and  petals.  When  I 
look  in  the  glass  I  see  that  every  line  in  my  face  means 


452 


JEFFERIES 


pessimism ;  but  in  spite  of  my  face — that  is  my  experience 
— I  remain  an  optimist.  Time  with  an  unsteady  hand  has 
etched  thin,  crooked  lines,  and,  deepening  the  hollows,  has 
cast  the  original  expression  into  shadow.  Pain  and  sor- 
row flow  over  us  with  little  ceasing,  as  the  sea-hoofs  beat 
on  the  beach.  Let  us  not  look  at  ourselves,  but  onward, 
and  take  strength  from  the  leaf  and  the  signs  of  the  field. 
He  is  indeed  despicable  who  can  not  look  onward  to  the 
ideal  life  of  man.  Not  to  do  so  is  to  deny  our  birthright 
of  mind. 

The  long  grass  flowing  toward  the  hedge  has  reared 
in  a  wave  against  it.  Along  the  hedge  it  is  higher  and 
greener,  and  rustles  into  the  very  bushes.  There  is  a 
mark  only  now  where  the  footpath  was;  it  passed  close  to 
the  hedge,  but  its  place  is  traceable  only  as  a  groove  in 
the  sorrel  and  seed-tops.  Though  it  has  quite  filled  the 
path,  the  grass  there  can  not  send  its  tops  so  high;  it  has 
left  a  winding  crease.  By  the  hedge  here  stands  a  moss- 
grown  willow,  and  its  slender  branches  extend  over  the 
sward.  Beyond  it  is  an  oak,  just  apart  from  the  bushes; 
then  the  ground  gently  rises,  and  an  ancient  pollard  ash, 
hollow  and  black  inside,  guards  an  open  gateway  like  a 
low  tower.  The  different  tone  of  green  shows  that  the 
hedge  is  there  of  nut  trees;  but  one  great  hawthorn 
spreads  out  in  a  semicircle,  roofing  the  grass  which  is  yet 
more  verdant  in  the  still  pool  (as  it  were)  under  it.  Next 
a  corner,  more  oaks,  and  a  chestnut  in  bloom.  Returning 
to  this  spot  an  old  apple  tree  stands  right  out  in  the 
meadow  like  an  island.  There  seemed  just  now  the  tiniest 
twinkle  of  movement  by  the  rushes,  but  it  was  lost  among 
the  hedge  parsley.  Among  the  gray  leaves  of  the  willow 
there  is  another  flit  of  motion;  and  visible  now  against 
the  sky  there  is  a  little  brown  bird,  not  to  be  distinguished 
at  the  moment  from  the  many  other  little  brown  birds  that 
are  known  to  be  about.  He  got  up  into  the  willow  from 
the  hedge  parsley  somehow,  without  being  seen  to  climb  or 
fly.  Suddenly  he  crosses  to  the  tops  of  the  hawthorn  and 
immediately  flings  himself  up  into  the  air  a  yard  or  two, 
his  wings  and  ruffled  crest  making  a  ragged  outline;  jerk, 
jerk,  jerk,  as  if  it  were  with  the  utmost  difficulty  he  could 
keep  even  at  that  height.  He  scolds,  and  twitters,  and 


THE    PAGEANT   OF   SUMMER  453 

chirps,  and  all  at  once  sinks  like  a  stone  into  the  hedge 
and  out  of  sight  as  a  stone  into  a  pond.  It  is  a  white- 
throat;  his  nest  is  deep  in  the  parsley  and  nettles.  Pres- 
ently he  will  go  out  to  the  island  apple  tree  and  back 
again  in  a  minute  or  two;  the  pair  of  them  are  so  fond  of 
each  other's  affectionate  company  they  can  not  remain 
apart. 

Watching  the  line  of  the  hedge,  about  every  two  min- 
utes, either  near  at  hand  or  yonder,  a  bird  darts  out  just 
at  the  level  of  the  grass,  hovers  a  second  with  labouring 
wings,  and  returns  as  swiftly  to  the  cover.  Sometimes  it 
is  a  flycatcher,  sometimes  a  greenfinch,  or  chaffinch,  now 
and  then  a  robin,  in  one  place  a  shrike,  perhaps  another 
is  a  redstart.  They  are  flyfishing  all  of  them,  seizing  in- 
sects from  the  sorrel  tips  and  grass,  as  the  kingfisher  takes 
a  roach  from  the  water.  A  blackbird  slips  up  into  the 
oak  and  a  dove  descends  in  the  corner  by  the  chestnut 
tree.  But  these  are  not  visible  together,  only  one  at  a 
time  and  with  intervals.  The  larger  part  of  the  life  of  the 
hedge  is  out  of  sight.  All  the  thrush-fledglings,  the  young 
blackbirds,  and  finches  are  hidden,  most  of  them  on  the 
mound  among  the  ivy,  and  parsley,  and  rough  grasses, 
protected  too  by  a  roof  of  brambles.  The  nests  that  still 
have  eggs  are  not,  like  the  nests  of  the  early  days  of  April, 
easily  found;  they  are  deep  down  in  the  tangled  herbage 
by  the  shore  of  the  ditch,  or  far  inside  the  thorny  thickets 
which  then  looked  mere  bushes,  and  are  now  so  broad. 
Landrails  are  running  in  the  grass  concealed  as  a  man 
would  be  in  a  wood;  they  have  nests  and  eggs  on  the 
ground  for  which  you  may  search  in  vain  till  the  mowers 
come.  Up  in  the  corner  a  fragment  of  white  fur  and 
marks  of  scratching  show  where  a  doe  has  been  prepar- 
ing for  a  litter.  Some  well-trodden  runs  lead  from  mound 
to  mound;  they  are  sandy  near  the  hedge  where  the  par- 
ticles have  been  carried  out  adhering  to  the  rabbits'  feet 
and  fur.  A  crow  rises  lazily  from  the  upper  end  of  the 
field,  and  perches  in  the  chestnut.  His  presence,  too,  was 
unsuspected.  He  is  there  by  far  too  frequently.  At  this 
season  the  crows  are  always  in  the  mowing  grass,  search- 
ing about,  stalking  in  winding  tracks  from  furrow  to  fur- 
row, picking  up  an  egg  here  and  a  foolish  fledgling  that 
29 


454  JEFFERIES 

has  wandered  from  the  mound  yonder.  Very  likely  there 
may  be  a  moorhen  or  two  slipping  about  under  cover  of 
the  long  grass;  thus  hidden  they  can  leave  the  shelter  of 
the  flags  and  wander  a  distance  from  the  brook.  So  that 
beneath  the  surface  of  the  grass  and  under  the  screen  of 
the  leaves  there  are  ten  times  more  birds  than  are  seen. 

Besides  the  singing  and  calling,  there  is  a  peculiar  sound 
which  is  only  heard  in  summer.  Waiting  quietly  to  dis- 
cover what  birds  are  about,  I  become  aware  of  a  sound  in 
the  very  air.  It  is  not  the  midsummer  hum  which  will 
soon  be  heard  over  the  heated  hay  in  the  valley  and  over 
the  cooler  hills  alike.  It  is  not  enough  to  be  called  a 
hum,  and  does  but  just  tremble  at  the  extreme  edge  of 
hearing.  If  the  branches  wave  and  rustle  they  overbear 
it;  the  buzz  of  a  passing  bee  is  so  much  louder  it  over- 
comes all  of  it  that  is  in  the  whole  field.  I  can  not  define 
it  except  by  calling  the  hours  of  winter  to  mind — they  are 
silent;  you  hear  a  branch  crack  or  creak  as  it  rubs  an- 
other in  the  wood;  you  hear  the  hoar  frost  crunch  on  the 
grass  beneath  your  feet,  but  the  air  is  without  sound  in 
itself.  The  sound  of  summer  is  everywhere — in  the  pass- 
ing breeze,  in  the  hedge,  in  the  broad-branching  trees,  in 
the  grass  as  it  swings;  all  the  myriad  particles  that  to- 
gether make  the  summer  varied  are  in  motion.  The  sap 
moves  in  the  trees,  the  pollen  is  pushed  out  from  grass 
and  flower,  and  yet  again  these  acres  and  acres  of  leaves 
and  square  miles  of  grass  blades — for  they  would  cover 
acres  and  square  miles  if  reckoned  edge  to  edge — are  draw- 
ing their  strength  from  the  atmosphere.  Exceedingly 
minute  as  these  vibrations  must  be,  their  numbers  perhaps 
may  give  them  a  volume  almost  reaching  in  the  aggregate 
to  the  power  of  the  ear.  Besides  the  quivering  leaf,  the 
swinging  grass,  the  fluttering  bird's  wing,  and  the  thou- 
sand oval  membranes  which  innumerable  insects  whirl 
about,  a  faint  resonance  seems  to  come  from  the  very  earth 
itself.  The  fervour  of  the  sunbeams  descending  in  a  tidal 
flood  rings  on  the  strung  harp  of  earth.  It  is  this  exquisite 
undertone,  heard  and  yet  unheard,  which  brings  the  mind 
into  sweet  accordance  with  the  wonderful  instrument  of 
Nature. 

By  the  apple  tree  there  is  a  low  bank,  where  the  grass 


THE   PAGEANT   OF   SUMMER  455 

is  less  tall  and  admits  the  heat  direct  to  the  ground;  here 
there  are  blue  flowers — bluer  than  the  wings  of  my  fa- 
vourite butterflies — with  white  centres,  the  lovely  bird's- 
eyes,  or  veronica.  The  violet  and  cowslip,  bluebell  and 
rose,  are  known  to  thousands;  the  veronica  is  overlooked. 
The  ploughboys  know  it,  and  the  wayside  children,  the 
mower,  and  those  who  linger  in  fields,  but  few  else. 
Brightly  blue  and  surrounded  by  greenest  grass,  im- 
bedded in  and  all  the  more  blue  for  the  shadow  of  the 
grass,  these  growing  butterflies'  wings  draw  to  themselves 
the  sun.  From  this  island  I  look  down  into  the  depth  of 
the  grasses.  Red  sorrel  spires — deep  drinkers  of  reddest 
sun  wine — stand  the  boldest,  and  in  their  numbers  threaten 
the  buttercups.  To  these  in  the  distance  they  give  the 
gipsy-gold  tint — the  reflection  of  fire  on  plates  of  the 
precious  metal.  It  will  show  even  on  a  ring  by  firelight; 
blood  in  the  gold,  they  say.  Gather  the  open  marguerite 
daisies,  and  they  seem  large — so  wide  a  disk,  such  fingers 
of  rays;  but  in  the  grass  their  size  is  toned  by  so  much 
green.  Clover  heads  of  honey  lurk  in  the  bunches  and 
by  the  hidden  footpath.  Like  clubs  from  Polynesia  the 
tips  of  the  grasses  are  varied  in  shape;  some  tend  to 
a  point — the  foxtails — some  are  hard  and  cylindrical; 
others,  avoiding  the  club  shape,  put  forth  the  slenderest 
branches  with  fruit  and  seed  at  the  ends,  which  tremble  as 
the  air  goes  by.  Their  stalks  are  ripening  and  becoming 
of  the  colour  of  hay  while  yet  the  long  blades  remain 
green.  Each  kind  is  repeated  a  hundred  times,  the  fox- 
tails are  succeeded  by  foxtails,  the  narrow  blades  by  nar- 
row blades,  but  never  become  monotonous;  sorrel  stands 
by  sorrel,  daisy  flowers  by  daisy.  This  bed  of  veronica 
at  the  foot  of  the  ancient  apple  has  a  whole  handful  of 
flowers,  and  yet  they  do  not  weary  the  eye.  Oak  follows 
oak  and  elm  ranks  with  elm,  but  the  woodlands  are  pleas- 
ant; however  many  times  reduplicated,  their  beauty  only 
increases.  So,  too,  the  summer  days;  the  sun  rises  on  the 
same  grasses  and  green  hedges,  there  is  the  same  blue  sky, 
but  did  we  ever  have  enough  of  them?  No,  not  in  a  hun- 
dred years!  There  seems  always  a  depth,  somewhere,  un- 
explored, a  thicket  that  has  not  been  seen  through,  a 
corner  full  of  ferns,  a  quaint  old  hollow  tree,  which  may 


JEFFERIES 

give  us  something.  Bees  go  by  me  as  I  stand  under  the 
apple,  but  they  pass  on  for  the  most  part  bound  on  a  long 
journey  across  to  the  clover  fields  or  up  to  the  thyme 
lands;  only  a  few  go  down  into  the  mowing  grass.  The 
hive  bees  are  the  most  impatient  of  insects;  they  can  not 
bear  to  entangle  their  wings  beating  against  grasses  or 
boughs.  Not  one  will  enter  a  hedge.  They  like  an  open 
and  level  surface,  places  cropped  by  sheep,  the  sward  by 
the  roadside,  fields  of  clover,  where  the  flower  is  not  deep 
under  grass. 

II 

It  is  the  patient  humblebee  that  goes  down  into  the 
forest  of  the  mowing  grass.  If  entangled,  the  humblebee 
climbs  up  a  sorrel  stem  and  takes  wing,  without  any  sign 
of  annoyance.  His  broad  back  with  tawny  bar  buoyantly 
glides  over  the  golden  buttercups.  He  hums  to  himself 
as  he  goes,  so  happy  is  he.  He  knows  no  skep,  no  cun- 
ning work  in  glass  receives  his  labour,  no  artificial  saccha- 
rine aids  him  when  the  beams  of  the  sun  are  cold,  there 
is  no  step  to  his  house  that  he  may  alight  in  comfort;  the 
way  is  not  made  clear  for  him  that  he  may  start  straight 
for  the  flowers,  nor  are  any  sown  for  him.  He  has  no 
shelter  if  the  storm  descends  suddenly;  he  has  no  dome  of 
twisted  straw  well  thatched  and  tiled  to  retreat  to.  The 
butcher-bird,  with  a  beak  like  a  crooked  iron  nail,  drives 
him  to  the  ground,  and  leaves  him  pierced  with  a  thorn; 
but  no  hail  of  shot  revenges  his  tortures.  The  grass 
stiffens  at  nightfall  (in  autumn),  and  he  must  creep  where 
he  may,  if  possibly  he  may  escape  the  frost.  No  one 
cares  for  the  humblebee.  But  down  to  the  flowering 
nettle  in  the  mossy-sided  ditch,  up  into  the  tall  elm,  wind- 
ing in  and  out  and  round  the  branched  buttercups,  along 
the  banks  of  the  brook,  far  inside  the  deepest  wood,  away 
he  wanders  and  despises  nothing.  His  nest  is  under  the 
rough  grasses  and  the  mosses  of  the  mound,  a  mere  tunnel 
beneath  the  fibres  and  matted  surface.  The  hawthorn 
overhangs  it,  the  fern  grows  by,  red  mice  rustle  past.  It 
thunders,  and  the  great  oak  trembles;  the  heavy  rain 
drops  through  the  treble  roof  of  oak  and  hawthorn  and 
fern.  Under  the  arched  branches  the  lightning  plays 


THE   PAGEANT   OF   SUMMER 


457 


along,  swiftly  to  and  fro,  or  seems  to,  like  the  swish  of 
a  whip,  a  yellowish-red  against  the  green;  a  boom!  a 
crackle  as  if  a  tree  fell  from  the  sky.  The  thick  grasses 
are  bowed,  the  white  florets  of  the  wild  parsley  are  beaten 
down,  the  rain  hurls  itself,  and  suddenly  a  fierce  blast  tears 
the  green  oak  leaves  and  whirls  them  out  into  the  fields; 
but  the  humblebee's  home,  under  moss  and  matted  fibres, 
remains  uninjured.  His  house  at  the  root  of  the  king  of 
trees  like  a  cave  in  the  rock,  is  safe.  The  storm  passes  and 
the  sun  comes  out,  the  air  is  the  sweeter  and  the  richer 
for  the  rain,  like  verse  with  a  rhyme;  there  will  be  more 
honey  in  the  flower.  Humble  he  is,  but  wild;  always  in 
the  field,  the  wood;  always  by  the  banks  and  thickets; 
always  wild  and  humming  to  his  flowers.  Therefore  I  like 
the  bumblebee,  being,  at  heart  at  least,  forever  roaming 
among  the  woodlands  and  the  hills  and  by  the  brooks.  In 
such  quick  summer  storms  the  lightning  gives  the  impres- 
sion of  being  far  more  dangerous  than  the  zigzag  paths 
traced  on  the  autumn  sky.  The  electric  cloud  seems  almost 
level  with  the  ground  and  the  livid  flame  to  rush  to  and 
fro  beneath  the  boughs  as  the  little  bats  do  in  the  evening. 
Caught  by  such  a  cloud,  I  have  stayed  under  thick 
larches  at  the  edge  of  plantations.  They  are  no  shelter, 
but  conceal  one  perfectly.  The  wood  pigeons  come  home 
to  their  nest  trees;  in  larches  they  seem  to  have  perma- 
nent nests,  almost  like  rooks.  Kestrels,  too,  come  home 
to  the  wood.  Pheasants  crow,  but  not  from  fear — from 
defiance;  in  fear  they  scream.  The  boom  startles  them, 
and  they  instantly  defy  the  sky.  The  rabbits  quietly  feed 
on  out  in  the  field  between  the  thistles  and  rushes  that  so 
often  grow  in  woodside  pastures,  quietly  hopping  to  their 
favourite  places,  utterly  heedless  how  heavy  the  echoes 
may  be  in  the  hollows  of  the  wooded  hills.  Till  the  rain 
comes  they  take  no  heed  whatever,  but  then  make  for 
shelter.  Blackbirds  often  make  a  good  deal  of  noise;  but 
the  soft  turtle-doves  coo  gently,  let  the  lightning  be  as 
savage  as  it  will.  Nothing  has  the  least  fear.  Man  alone, 
more  senseless  than  a  pigeon,  put  a  god  in  vapour;  and  to 
this  day,  though  the  printing  press  has  set  a  foot  on  every 
threshold,  numbers  bow  the  knee  when  they  hear  the  roar 
the  timid  dove  does  not  heed.  So  trustful  are  the  doves, 


45g  JEFFERIES 

the  squirrels,  the  birds  of  the  branches,  and  the  creatures 
of  the  field.  Under  their  tuition  let  us  rid  ourselves  of 
mental  terrors,  and  face  death  itself  as  calmly  as  they  do 
the  vivid  lightning;  so  trustful  and  so  content  with  their 
fate,  resting  in  themselves  and  unappalled.  If  but  by  rea- 
son and  will  I  could  reach  the  godlike  calm  and  courage 
of  what  we  so  thoughtlessly  call  the  timid  turtle-dove,  I 
should  lead  a  nearly  perfect  life. 

The  bark  of  the  ancient  apple  tree  under  which  I  have 
been  standing  is  shrunken  like  iron  which  has  been  heated 
and  let  cool  round  the  rim  of  a  wheel.  For  a  hundred 
years  the  horses  have  rubbed  against  it  while  feeding 
in  the  aftermath.  The  scales  of  the  bark  are  gone  or 
smoothed  down  and  level,  so  that  insects  have  no  hiding- 
place.  There  are  no  crevices  for  them,  the  horsehairs  that 
were  caught  anywhere  have  been  carried  away  by  birds 
for  their  nests.  The  trunk  is  smooth  and  columnar,  hard 
as  iron.  A  hundred  times  the  mowing  grass  has  grown 
up  around  it,  the  birds  have  built  their  nests,  the  butter- 
flies fluttered  by,  and  the  acorns  dropped  from  the  oaks. 
It  is  a  long,  long  time,  counted  by  artificial  hours  or  by 
the  seasons,  but  it  is  longer  still  in  another  way.  The 
greenfinch  in  the  hawthorn  yonder  has  been  there  since  I 
came  out,  and  all  the  time  has  been  happily  talking  to  his 
love.  He  has  left  the  hawthorn,  indeed,  but  only  for  a 
minute  or  two,  to  fetch  a  few  seeds,  and  comes  back  each 
time  more  full  of  song-talk  than  ever.  He  notes  no  slow 
movement  of  the  oak's  shadow  on  the  grass;  it  is  nothing 
to  him  and  his  lady  dear  that  the  sun,  as  seen  from  his 
nest,  is  crossing  from  one  great  bough  of  the  oak  to  an- 
other. The  dew  even  in  the  deepest  and  most  tangled 
grass  has  long  since  been  dried,  and  some  of  the  flowers 
that  close  at  noon  will  shortly  fold  their  petals.  The 
morning  airs,  which  breathe  so  sweetly,  come  less  and  less 
frequently  as  the  heat  increases.  Vanishing  from  the  sky, 
the  last  fragments  of  cloud  have  left  an  untarnished  azure. 
Many  times  the  bees  have  returned  to  their  hives,  and 
thus  the  index  of  the  day  advances.  It  is  nothing  to  the 
greenfinches;  all  their  thoughts  are  in  their  song-talk. 
The  sunny  moment  is  to  them  all  in  all.  So  deeply  are 
they  wrapped  in  it  that  they  do  not  know  whether  it  is  a 


THE   PAGEANT  OF   SUMMER 


459 


moment  or  a  year.  There  is  no  clock  for  feeling,  for  joy, 
for  love.  And  with  all  their  motions  and  stepping  from 
bough  to  bough,  they  are  not  restless;  they  have  so  much 
time,  you  see.  So,  too,  the  whitethroat  in  the  wild  pars- 
ley; so,  too,  the  thrush  that  just  now  peered  out  and 
partly  fluttered  his  wings  as  he  stood  to  look.  A  butterfly 
comes  and  stays  on  a  leaf — a  leaf  much  warmed  by  the 
sun — and  shuts  his  wings.  In  a  minute  he  opens  them, 
shuts  them  again,  half  wheels  round,  and  by-and-by — just 
when  he  chooses,  and  not  before — floats  away.  The  flow- 
ers open,  and  remain  open  for  hours,  to  the  sun.  Haste- 
lessness  is  the  only  word  one  can  make  up  to  describe  it; 
there  is  much  rest,  but  no  haste.  Each  moment,  as  with 
the  greenfinches,  is  so  full  of  life  that  it  seems  so  long  and 
so  sufficient  in  itself.  Not  only  the  days,  but  life  itself 
lengthens  in  summer.  I  would  spread  abroad  my  arms 
and  gather  more  of  it  to  me,  could  I  do  so. 

All  the  procession  of  living  and  growing  things  passes. 
The  grass  stands  up  taller  and  still  taller,  the  sheaths  open, 
and  the  stalk  arises,  the  pollen  clings  till  the  breeze  sweeps 
it.  The  bees  rush  past,  and  the  resolute  wasps;  the  hum- 
blebees,  whose  weight  swings  them  along.  About  the 
oaks  and  maples  the  brown  chafers  swarm,  and  the  fern- 
owls at  dusk,  and  the  blackbirds  and  jays  by  day,  can  not 
reduce  their  legions  while  they  last.  Yellow  butterflies, 
and  white,  broad  red  admirals,  and  sweet  blues;  think  of 
the  kingdom  of  flowers  which  is  theirs!  Heavy  moths 
burring  at  the  edge  of  the  copse;  green,  and  red,  and 
gold  flies;  gnats,  like  smoke,  around  the  tree  tops;  midges 
so  thick  over  the  brook,  as  if  you  could  haul  a  net  full; 
tiny  leaping  creatures  in  the  grass;  bronze  beetles  across 
the  path;  blue  dragon-flies  pondering  on  cool  leaves  of 
water-plantain.  Blue  jays  flitting,  a  magpie  drooping 
across  from  elm  to  elm;  young  rooks  that  have  escaped 
the  hostile  shot  blundering  up  into  the  branches;  missel 
thrushes  leading  their  fledglings,  already  strong  on  the 
wing,  from  field  to  field.  An  egg  here  on  the  sward 
dropped  by  a  starling;  a  red  ladybird  creeping,  tortoise- 
like,  up  a  green  fern  frond.  Finches  undulating  through 
the  air,  shooting  themselves  with  closed  wings,  and  linnets 
happy  with  their  young. 


460  JEFFERIES 

Golden  dandelion  disks — gold  and  orange — of  a  hue 
more  beautiful,  I  think,  than  the  higher  and  more  visible 
buttercup.  A  blackbird,  gleaming,  so  black  is  he,  splash- 
ing in  the  runlet  of  water  across  the  gateway.  A  ruddy 
kingfisher  swiftly  drawing  himself,  as  you  might  draw  a 
stroke  with  a  pencil,  over  a  surface  of  the  yellow  butter- 
cups, and  away  above  the  hedge.  Hart's-tongue  fern, 
thick  with  green,  so  green  as  to  be  thick  with  its  colour, 
deep  in  the  ditch  under  tjie  shady  hazel  boughs.  White 
meadow-sweet  lifting  its  tiny  florets,  and  black  flowered 
sedges.  You  must  push  through  the  reed  grass  to  find 
the  sword  flags;  the  stout  willow  herbs  will  not  be  tram- 
pled down,  but  resist  the  foot  like  underwood.  Pink 
lychnis  flowers  behind  the  withy  stoles,  and  little  black 
moorhens  swim  away,  as  you  gather  it,  after  their  mother, 
who  has  dived  under  the  water-grass,  and  broken  the 
smooth  surface  of  the  duckweed.  Yellow  loosestrife  is 
rising,  thick  comfrey  stands  at  the  very  edge;  the  sand- 
pipers run  where  the  shore  is  free  from  bushes.  Back  by 
the  underwood  the  prickly  and  repellent  brambles  will 
presently  present  us  with  fruit.  For  the  squirrels  the  nuts 
are  forming,  green  beechmast  is  there — green  wedges 
under  the  spray;  up  in  the  oaks  the  small  knots,  like  bark 
rolled  up  in  a  dot,  will  be  acorns.  Purple  vetches  along 
the  mounds,  yellow  lotus  where  the  grass  is  shorter,  and 
orchis  succeeds  to  orchis.  As  I  write  them,  so  these  things 
come — not  set  in  gradation,  but  like  the  broadcast  flowers 
in  the  mowing  grass. 

Now  follows  the  gorse,  and  the  pink  rest-harrow,  and 
the  sweet  lady's  bed-straw,  set  as  it  were  in  the  midst  of  a 
little  thorn-bush.  The  broad  repetition  of  the  yellow 
clover  is  not  to  be  written;  acre  upon  acre,  and  not  one 
spot  of  green,  as  if  all  the  green  had  been  planed  away, 
leaving  only  the  flowers  to  which  the  bees  come  by  the 
thousand  from  far  and  near.  But  one  white  campion 
stands  in  the  midst  of  the  lake  of  yellow.  The  field  is 
scented  as  though  a  hundred  hives  of  honey  had  been 
emptied  on  it.  Along  the  mound  by  it  the  bluebells  are 
seeding,  the  hedge  has  been  cut  and  the  ground  is  strewn 
with  twigs.  Among  those  seeding  bluebells  and  dry  twigs 
and  mosses  I  think  a  titlark  has  his  nest,  as  he  stavs  all 


THE   PAGEANT   OF   SUMMER  461 

day  there  and  in  the  oak  over.  The  pale  clear  yellow  of 
charlock,  sharp  and  clear,  promises  the  finches  bushels  of 
seed  for  their  young.  Under  the  scarlet  of  the  poppies  the 
larks  run,  and  then  for  change  of  colour  soar  into  the  blue. 
Creamy  honeysuckle  on  the  hedge  around  the  cornfield, 
buds  of  wild  rose  everywhere,  but  no  sweet  petal  yet. 
Yonder,  where  the  wheat  can  climb  no  higher  up  the 
slope,  are  the  purple  heath  bells,  thyme,  and  flitting  stone- 
chats. 

The  lone  barn  shut  off  by  acres  of  barley  is  noisy  with 
sparrows.  It  is  their  city,  and  there  is  a  nest  in  every 
crevice,  almost  under  every  tile.  Sometimes  the  par- 
tridges run  between  the  ricks,  and  when  the  bats  come  out 
of  the  roof,  leverets  play  in  the  wagon-track.  At  even  a 
fern-owl  beats  by,  passing  close  to  the  eaves  whence  the 
moths  issue.  On  the  narrow  wagon-track  which  descends 
along  a  coombe  and  is  worn  in  chalk,  the  heat  pours  down 
by  day  as  if  an  invisible  lens  in  the  atmosphere  focused 
the  sun's  rays.  Strong  woody  knapweed  endures  it,  so 
does  toadflax  and  pale  blue  scabious,  and  wild  mignonette. 
The  very  sun  of  Spain  burns  and  burns  and  ripens  the 
wheat  on  the  edge  of  the  coombe,  and  will  only  let  the 
spring  moisten  a  yard  or  two  around  it;  but  there  a  few 
rushes  have  sprung,  and  in  the  water  itself  brooklime  with 
blue  flowers  grows  so  thickly  that  nothing  but  a  bird  could 
find  space  to  drink.  So  down  again  from  this  sun  of  Spain 
to  woody  coverts  where  the  wild  hops  are  blocking  every 
avenue,  and  green-flowered  bryony  would  fain  climb  to  the 
trees;  where  gray-flecked  ivy  winds  spirally  about  the  red, 
rugged  bark  of  pines,  where  burdocks  fight  for  the  foot- 
path, and  teazle-heads  look  over  the  low  hedges.  Brake- 
fern  rises  five  feet  high;  in  some  way  woodpeckers  are 
associated  with  brake,  and  there  seem  more  of  them  where 
it  flourishes.  If  you  count  the  depth  and  strength  of  its 
roots  in  the  loamy  sand,  add  the  thickness  of  its  flattened 
stem,  and  the  width  of  its  branching  fronds,  you  may  say 
that  it  comes  near  to  be  a  little  tree.  Beneath  where  the 
ponds  are  bushy  mare's  tails  grow,  and  on  the  moist  banks 
jointed  pewterwort;  some  of  the  broad  bronze  leaves  of 
water-weeds  seem  to  try  and  conquer  the  pond  and  cover 
it  so  firmly  that  a  wagtail  may  run  on  them.  A  white  but- 


462  JEFFERIES 

terfly  follows  along  'the  wagon-road,  the  pheasants  slip 
away  as  quietly  as  the  butterfly  flies,  but  a  jay  screeches 
loudly  and  flutters  in  high  rage  to  see  us.  Under  an  an- 
cient garden  wall  among  matted  bines  of  trumpet  con- 
volvulus there  is  a  hedge-sparrow's  nest  overhung  with 
ivy  on  which  even  now  the  last  black  berries  cling. 

There  are  minute  white  flowers  on  the  top  of  the  wall, 
out  of  reach,  and  lichen  grows  against  it  dried  by  the  sun 
till  it  looks  ready  to  crumble.  By  the  gateway  grows  a 
thick  bunch  of  meadow  geranium,  soon  to  flower;  over 
the  gate  is  the  dusty  highway  road,  quiet  but  dusty,  dotted 
with  innumerable  footmarks  of  a  flock  of  sheep  that  has 
passed.  The  sound  of  their  bleating  still  comes  back,  and 
the  bees  driven  up  by  their  feet  have  hardly  had  time  to 
settle  again  on  the  white  clover  beginning  to  flower  on 
the  short  roadside  sward.  All  the  hawthorn  leaves  and 
brier  and  bramble,  the  honeysuckle,  too,  is  gritty  with  the 
dust  that  has  been  scattered  upon  it.  But  see — can  it  be? 
Stretch  a  hand  high,  quick,  and  reach  it  down;  the  first, 
the  sweetest,  the  dearest  rose  of  June.  Not  yet  expected, 
for  the  time  is  between  the  May  and  the  roses,  least  of  all 
here  in  the  hot  and  dusty  highway;  but  it  is  found — the 
first  rose  of  June. 

Straight  go  the  white  petals  to  the  heart;  straight  the 
mind's  glance  goes  back  to  how  many  other  pageants  of 
summer  in  old  times!  When  perchance  the  sunny  days 
were  even  more  sunny;  when  the  stilly  oaks  were  full  of 
mystery,  lurking  like  the  Druid's  mistletoe  in  the  midst 
of  their  mighty  branches.  A  glamour  in  the  heart  came 
back  to  it  again  from  every  flower;  as  the  sunshine  was  re- 
flected from  them  so  the  feeling  in  the  heart  returned  ten- 
fold. To  the  dreamy  summer  haze  love  gave  a  deep  en- 
chantment, the  colours  were  fairer,  the  blue  more  lovely  in 
the  lucid  sky.  Each  leaf  finer,  and  the  gross  earth  en- 
amelled beneath  the  feet.  A  sweet  breath  on  the  air,  a 
soft,  warm  hand  in  the  touch  of  the  sunshine,  a  glance  in 
the  gleam  of  the  rippled  waters,  a  whisper  in  the  dance  of 
the  shadows.  The  ethereal  haze  lifted  the  heavy  oaks  and 
they  were  buoyant  on  the  mead,  the  rugged  bark  was 
chastened  and  no  longer  rough,  each  slender  flower  be- 
neath them  again  refined.  There  was  a  presence  every- 


THE   PAGEANT    OF    SUMMER  463 

where  with  us,  though  unseen;  with  us  on  the  open  hills, 
and  not  shut  out  under  the  dark  pines.  Dear  were  the 
'June  roses  then  because  for  another  gathered.  Yet  even 
dearer  now  with  so  many  years  as  it  were  upon  the  petals; 
all  the  days  that  have  been  before,  all  the  heart-throbs, 
all  our  hopes  lie  in  this  opened  bud.  Let  not  the  eyes 
grow  dim,  look  not  back  but  forward;  the  soul  must  up- 
hold itself  like  the  sun.  Let  us  labour  to  make  the  heart 
grow  larger  as  we  become  older,  as  the  spreading  oak 
gives  more  shelter.  That  we  could  but  take  to  the  soul 
some  of  the  greatness  and  the  beauty  of  the  summer! 

Still  the  pageant  moves.  The  song-talk  of  the  finches 
rises  and  sinks  like  the  tinkle  of  a  waterfall.  The  green- 
finches have  been  by  me  all  the  while.  A  bullfinch  pipes 
now  and  then  farther  up  the  hedge  where  the  brambles 
and  thorns  are  thickest.  Boldest  of  birds  to  look  at,  he 
is  always  in  hiding.  The  shrill  tone  of  a  goldfinch  came 
just  now  from  the  ash  branches,  but  he  has  gone  on. 
Every  four  or  five  minutes  a  charfinch  sings  close  by,  and 
another  fills  the  interval  near  the  gateway.  There  are  lin- 
nets somewhere,  but  I  can  not  from  the  old  apple  tree 
fix  their  exact  place.  Thrushes  have  sung  and  ceased; 
they  will  begin  again  in  ten  minutes.  The  blackbirds  do 
not  cease;  the  note  uttered  by  a  blackbird  in  the  oak 
yonder  before  it  can  drop  is  taken  up  by  a  second  near 
the  top  of  the  field,  and  ere  it  falls  is  caught  by  a  third 
on  the  left-hand  side.  From  one  of  the  topmost  boughs 
of  an  elm  there  fell  the  song  of  a  willow  warbler  for 
awhile;  one  of  the  least  of  birds,  he  often  seeks  the  highest 
branches  of  the  highest  tree. 

A  yellowhammer  has  just  flown  from  a  bare  branch 
in  the  gateway,  where  he  has  been  perched  and  singing 
a  full  hour.  Presently  he  will  commence  again,  and  as 
the  sun  declines  will  sing  him  to  the  horizon,  and  then 
again  sing  till  nearly  dusk.  The  yellowhammer  is  almost 
the  longest  of  all  the  singers;  he  sits  and  sits  and  has  no 
inclination  to  move.  In  the  spring  he  sings,  in  the  sum- 
mer he  sings,  and  he  continues  when  the  last  sheaves  are 
being  carried  from  the  wheat  field.  The  redstart  yonder 
has  given  forth  a  few  notes,  the  whitethroat  flings  him- 
self into  the  air  at  short  intervals  and  chatters,  the  shrike 


464  JEFFERIES 

calls  sharp  and  determined,  faint  but  shrill  calls  descend 
from  the  swifts  in  the  air.  These  descend,  but  the  twit- 
tering notes  of  the  swallows  do  not  reach  so  far;  they  are 
too  high  to-day.  A  cuckoo  has  called  by  the  brook,  and 
now  fainter  from  a  greater  distance.  That  the  titlarks 
are  singing  I  know,  but  not  within  hearing  from  here; 
a  dove,  though,  is  audible,  and  a  chiffchaff  has  twice 
passed.  Afar  beyond  the  oaks  at  the  top  of  the  field 
dark  specks  ascend  from  time  to  time,  and  after  moving 
in  wide  circles  for  awhile  descend  again  to  the  corn. 
These  must  be  larks;  but  their  notes  are  not  powerful 
enough  to  reach  me,  though  they  would  were  it  not  for 
the  song  in  the  hedges,  the  hum  of  innumerable  insects, 
and  the  ceaseless  "  Crake,  crake!  "  of  landrails.  There 
are  at  least  two  landrails  in  the  mowing  grass;  one  of 
them  just  now  seemed  coming  straight  toward  the  apple 
tree,  and  I  expected  in  a  minute  to  see  the  grass  move, 
when  the  bird  turned  aside  and  entered  the  tufts  and  wild 
parsley  by  the  hedge.  Thence  the  call  has  come  without 
a  moment's  pause,  "  Crake,  crake!  "  till  the  thick  hedge 
seems  filled  with  it.  Tits  have  visited  the  apple  tree  over 
my  head,  a  wren  has  sung  in  the  willow,  or  rather  on  a 
dead  branch  projecting  lower  down  than  the  leafy  boughs, 
and  a  robin  across  under  the  elms  in  the  opposite  hedge. 
Elms  are  a  favourite  tree  of  robins,  not  the  upper  branches, 
but  those  that  grow  down  the  trunk,  and  are  the  first  to 
have  leaves  in  the  spring. 

The  yellowhammer  is  the  most  persistent  individually, 
but  I  think  the  blackbirds  when  listened  to  are  the  masters 
of  the  fields.  Before  one  can  finish  another  begins,  like 
the  summer  ripples  succeeding  behind  each  other,  so  that 
the  melodious  sound  merely  changes  its  position.  Now 
here,  now  in  the  corners,  then  across  the  field,  again  in 
the  distant  copse,  where  it  seems  about  to  sink,  when  it 
rises  again  almost  at  hand.  Like  a  great  human  artist, 
the  blackbird  makes  no  effort,  being  fully  conscious  that 
his  liquid  tone  can  not  be  matched.  He  utters  a  few  de- 
licious notes,  and  carelessly  quits  the  green  stage  of  the 
oak  till  it  pleases  him  to  sing  again.  Without  the  black- 
bird, in  whose  throat  the  sweetness  of  the  green  fields 
dwells,  the  days  would  be  only  partly  summer.  Without 


THE   PAGEANT   OF   SUMMER  465 

the  violet  all  the  blue-bells  and  cowslips  could  not  make 
a  spring,  and  without  the  blackbird  even  the  nightingale 
would  be  but  half  welcome.  It  is  not  yet  noon,  these 
songs  have  been  ceaseless  since  dawn;  this  evening,  after 
the  yellowhammer  has  sung  the  sun  down,  when  the  moon 
rises  and  the  faint  stars  appear,  still  the  cuckoo  will  call, 
and  the  grasshopper  lark,  the  landrail's  "Crake,  crake!" 
will  echo  from  the  mound,  a  warbler  or  a  blackcap  will 
utter  its  notes,  and  even  at  the  darkest  of  the  summer 
night  the  swallows  will  hardly  sleep  in  their  nests.  As 
the  morning  sky  grows  blue,  an  hour  before  the  sun,  up 
will  rise  the  larks  singing  and  audible  now,  the  cuckoo  will 
recommence,  and  the  swallows  will  start  again  on  their 
tireless  journey.  So  that  the  songs  of  the  summer  birds 
are  as  ceaseless  as  the  sound  of  the  waterfall  which  plays 
day  and  night. 

I  can  not  leave  it,  I  must  stay  under  the  old  tree  in 
the  midst  of  the  long  grass,  the  luxury  of  the  leaves,  and 
the  song  in  the  very  air.  I  seem  as  if  I  could  feel  all  the 
glowing  life  the  sunshine  gives  and  the  south  wind  calls 
to  being.  The  endless  grass,  the  endless  leaves,  the  im- 
mense strength  of  the  oak  expanding,  the  unalloyed  joy 
of  finch  and  blackbird;  from  all  of  them  I  receive  a  little. 
Each  gives  me  something  of  the  pure  joy  they  gather  for 
themselves.  In  the  blackbird's  melody  one  note  is  mine; 
in  the  dance  of  the  leaf  shadows  the  formed  maze  is  for 
me,  though  the  motion  is  theirs;  the  flowers  with  a  thou- 
sand faces  have  collected  the  kisses  of  the  morning.  Feel- 
ing with  them,  I  receive  some,  at  least,  of  their  fulness  of 
life.  Never  could  I  have  enough;  never  stay  long  enough 
—whether  here  or  whether  lying  on  the  shorter  sward 
under  the  sweeping  and  graceful  birches,  or  on  the  thyme- 
scented  hills.  Hour  after  hour,  and  still  not  enough.  Or 
walking  the  footpath  was  never  long  enough,  or  my 
strength  sufficient  to  endure  till  the  mind  was  weary.  The 
exceeding  beauty  of  the  earth,  in  her  splendour  of  life, 
yields  a  new  thought  with  every  petal.  The  hours  when 
the  mind  is  absorbed  by  beauty  are  the  only  hours  when 
we  really  live,  so  that  the  longer  we  can  stay  among  these 
things  so  much  the  more  is  snatched  from  inevitable  Time. 
Let  the  shadow  advance  upon  the  dial — I  can  watch  it  with 


466  JEFFERIES 

equanimity  while  it  is  there  to  be  watched.  It  is  only 
when  the  shadow  is  not  there,  when  the  clouds  of  winter 
cover  it,  that  the  dial  is  terrible.  The  invisible  shadow 
goes  on  and  steals  from  us.  But  now,  while  I  can  see 
the  shadow  of  the  tree  and  watch  it  slowly  gliding  along 
the  surface  of  the  grass,  it  is  mine.  These  are  the  only 
hours  that  are  not  wasted — these  hours  that  absorb  the 
soul  and  fill  it  with  beauty.  This  is  real  life,  and  all  else 
is  illusion,  or  mere  endurance.  Does  this  reverie  of  flowers 
and  waterfall  and  song  form  an  ideal,  a  human  ideal,  in 
the  mind?  It  does;  much  the  same  ideal  that  Phidias 
sculptured  of  man  and  woman  filled  with  a  godlike  sense 
of  the  violet  fields  of  Greece,  beautiful  beyond  thought, 
calm  as  my  turtle-dove  before  the  lurid  lightning  of  the 
unknown.  To  be  beautiful  and  to  be  calm,  without  mental 
fear,  is  the  ideal  of  Nature.  If  I  can  not  achieve  it,  at 
least  I  can  think  it. 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

BY 

ROBERT    LOUIS   STEVENSON 


ROBERT  Louis  STEVENSON  was  born  in  Edinburgh,  November  13,  1850. 
His  father  and  grandfather  were  engineers  especially  employed  in  build- 
ing lighthouses.  Robert  was  educated  at  the  university  of  his  native 
city,  tried  to  learn  his  father's  profession,  then  studied  law,  but  at  the  age 
of  twenty-three  was  ordered  south  for  his  health.  He  went  to  the  south 
of  France,  and  at  the  same  time  determined  to  follow  the  real  bent  of  his 
mind,  which  was  for  literature.  He  wrote  many  magazine  articles,  and 
in  1878  appeared  his  first  book,  "An  Inland  Voyage,"  the  story  of  a  canoe 
excursion  on  rivers  in  France.  A  year  later  he  came  to  the  United  States 
in  the  steerage  of  a  steamer,  as  an  "  amateur  emigrant,"  crossed  the  conti- 
nent in  an  emigrant  car,  and  in  California  married  Mrs.  Osbourne,  whose 
acquaintance  he  had  made  in  an  artist  colony  at  Fontainebleau.  On  his 
return  to  England  he  published  two  volumes  of  essays,  followed  by  the 
"New  Arabian  Nights"  and  "Treasure  Island,"  the  first  of  his  books  to 
attract  popular  attention.  He  was  an  industrious  and  prolific  writer,  but 
was  obliged  to  move  frequently  to  one  place  and  another  in  search  of 
health,  and  at  last  (in  1889)  found  in  the  Samoan  Islands  a  climate  in 
which  he  could  live.  He  bought  four  hundred  acres  near  Apia,  and  built 
a  house,  which  was  his  home  until  he  died,  December  3,  1894.  In  accord- 
ance with  his  own  wish,  he  was  buried  on  the  summit  of  Mount  Vaea, 
near  his  house.  The  strongest  of  his  many  stories  are,  "  The  Strange 
Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,"  "  Kidnapped,"  and  "  Prince  Otto." 
He  also  published  two  volumes  of  poems,  which  have  their  admirers. 
Some  critical  readers  think  his  finest  work  is  in  his  essays.  He  took  a 
warm  interest  in  the  Samoans  and  their  history,  which  they  reciprocated 
with  affectionate  regard  for  Tusitala  (the  story-teller),  as  they  called  him. 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

THE  regret  we  have  for  our  childhood  is  not  wholly 
justifiable:  so  much  a  man  may  lay  down  without 
fear  of  public  ribaldry;  for,  although  we  shake  our 
heads  over  the  change,  we  are  not  unconscious  of  the 
manifold  advantages  of  our  new  state.  What  we  lose  in 
generous  impulse  we  more  than  gain  in  the  habit  of  gen- 
erously watching  others;  and  the  capacity  to  enjoy  Shake- 
speare may  balance  a  lost  aptitude  for  playing  at  soldiers. 
Terror  is  gone  out  of  our  lives,  moreover;  we  no  longer 
see  the  devil  in  the  bed-curtains  nor  lie  awake  to  listen 
to  the  wind.  We  go  to  school  no  more;  and  if  we  have 
only  exchanged  one  drudgery  for  another  (which  is  by  no 
means  sure),  we  are  set  free  forever  from  the  daily  fear 
of  chastisement.  And  yet  a  great  change  has  overtaken 
us;  and  although  we  do  not  enjoy  ourselves  less,  at  least 
we  take  our  pleasure  differently.  We  need  pickles  now- 
adays to  make  Wednesday's  cold  mutton  please  our  Fri- 
day's appetite;  and  I  can  remember  the  time  when  to  call 
it  red  venison,  and  tell  myself  a  hunter's  story,  would  have 
made  it  more  palatable  than  the  best  of  sauces.  To  the 
grown  person,  cold  mutton  is  cold  mutton  all  the  world 
over;  not  all  the  mythology  ever  invented  by  man  will 
make  it  better  or  worse  to  him;  the  broad  fact,  the  clamant 
reality,  of  the  mutton  carries  away  before  it  such  seduc- 
tive figments.  But  for  the  child  it  is  still  possible  to 
weave  an  enchantment  over  eatables;  and  if  he  has  but 
read  of  a  dish  in  a  story-book,  it  will  be  heavenly  manna 
to  him  for  a  week. 

If  a  grown  man  does  not  like  eating  and  drinking  and 
exercise,  if  he  is  not  something  positive  in  his  tastes,  it 
means  he  has  a  feeble  body  and  should  have  some  medi- 
cine; but  children  may  be  pure  spirits,  if  they  will,  and 
30  469 


STEVENSON 

take  their  enjoyment  in  a  world  of  moonshine.  Sensation 
does  not  count  for  so  much  in  our  first  years  as  afterward; 
something  of  the  swaddling  numbness  of  infancy  clings 
about  us;  we  see  and  touch  and  hear  through  a  sort  of 
golden  mist.  Children,  for  instance,  are  able  enough  to 
see,  but  they  have  no  great  faculty  for  looking;  they  do 
not  use  their  eyes  for  the  pleasure  of  using  them,  but  for 
by-ends  of  their  own;  and  the  things  I  call  to  mind  seeing 
most  vividly,  were  not  beautiful  in  themselves,  but  merely 
interesting  or  enviable  to  me  as  I  thought  they  might  be 
turned  to  practical  account  in  play.  Nor  is  the  sense  of 
touch  so  clean  and  poignant  in  children  as  it  is  in  a  man. 
If  you  will  turn  over  your  old  memories,  I  think  the  sen- 
sations of  this  sort  you  remember  will  be  somewhat  vague, 
and  come  to  not  much  more  than  a  blunt,  general  sense  of 
heat  on  summer  days,  or  a  blunt,  general  sense  of  well- 
being  in  bed.  And  here,  of  course,  you  will  understand 
pleasurable  sensations;  for  overmastering  pain — the  most 
deadly  and  tragical  element  in  life,  and  the  true  com- 
mander of  man's  soul  and  body — alas!  pain  has  its  own 
way  with  all  of  us;  it  breaks  in,  a  rude  visitant,  upon  the 
fairy  garden  where  the  child  wanders  in  a  dream,  no  less 
surely  than  it  rules  upon  the  field  of  battle,  or  sends  the 
immortal  war-god  whimpering  to  his  father;  and  inno- 
cence, no  more  than  philosophy,  can  protect  us  from  this 
sting.  As  for  taste,  when  we  bear  in  mind  the  excesses  of 
unmitigated  sugar  which  delight  a  youthful  palate,  "  it  is 
surely  no  very  cynical  asperity  "  to  think  taste  a  char- 
acter of  the  maturer  growth.  Smell  and  hearing  are  per- 
haps more  developed;  I  remember  many  scents,  many 
voices,  and  a  great  deal  of  spring  singing  in  the  woods. 
But  hearing  is  capable  of  vast  improvement  as  a  means  of 
pleasure;  and  there  is  all  the  world  between  gaping  won- 
derment at  the  jargon  of  birds,  and  the  emotion  with 
which  a  man  listens  to  articulate  music. 

At  the  same  time,  and  step  by  step  with  this  increase 
in  the  definition  and  intensity  of  what  we  feel  which  ac- 
companies our  growing  age,  another  change  takes  place  in 
the  sphere  of  intellect,  by  which  all  things  are  transformed 
and  seen  through  theories  and  associations  as  through  col- 
oured windows.  We  make  to  ourselves  day  by  day,  out  of 


CHILD'S  PLAY  471 

history,  and  gossip,  and  economical  speculations,  and  God 
knows  what,  a  medium  in  which  we  walk  and  through 
which  we  look  abroad.  We  study  shop  windows  with 
other  eyes  than  in  our  childhood,  never  to  wonder,  not 
always  to  admire,  but  to  make  and  modify  our  little  in- 
congruous theories  about  life.  It  is  no  longer  the  uniform 
of  a  soldier  that  arrests  our  attention,  but  perhaps  the  flow- 
ing carriage  of  a  woman,  or  perhaps  a  countenance  that 
has  been  vividly  stamped  with  passion  and  carries  an  ad- 
venturous story  written  in  its  lines.  The  pleasure  of  sur- 
prise is  passed  away;  sugar-loaves  and  water-carts  seem 
mighty  tame  to  encounter;  and  we  walk  the  streets  to  make 
romances  and  to  sociologize.  Nor  must  we  deny  that  a 
good  many  of  us  walk  them  solely  for  the  purposes  of 
transit  or  in  the  interest  of  a  livelier  digestion.  These, 
indeed,  may  look  back  with  mingled  thoughts  upon  their 
childhood,  but  the  rest  are  in  a  better  case;  they  know 
more  than  when  they  were  children,  they  understand  bet- 
ter, their  desires  and  sympathies  answer  more  nimbly  to 
the  provocation  of  the  senses,  and  their  minds  are  brim- 
ming with  interest  as  they  go  about  the  world. 

According  to  my  contention,  this  is  a  flight  to  which 
children  can  not  rise.  They  are  wheeled  in  perambulators 
or  dragged  about  by  nurses  in  a  pleasing  stupor.  A  vague, 
faint,  abiding  wonderment  possesses  them.  Here  and 
there  some  specially  remarkable  circumstance,  such  as  a 
water-cart  or  a  guardsman,  fairly  penetrates  into  the  seat 
of  thought  and  calls  them,  for  half  a  moment,  out  of  them- 
selves; and  you  may  see  them,  still  towed  forward  side- 
ways by  the  inexorable  nurse  as  by  a  sort  of  destiny,  but 
still  staring  at  the  bright  object  in  their  wake.  It  may  be 
some  minutes  before  another  such  moving  spectacle  re- 
awakens them  to  the  world  in  which  they  dwell.  For 
other  children  they  almost  invariably  show  some  intelli- 
gent sympathy.'/"  There  is  a  fine  fellow  making  mud 
pies,"  they  seem  to  say;  "that  I  can  understand,  there  is 
some  sense  in  mud  pies."  But  the  doings  of  their  elders, 
unless  where  they  are  speakingly  picturesque  or  recom- 
mend themselves  by  the  quality  of  being  easily  imitable, 
they  let  them  go  over  their  heads  (as  we  say)  without  the 
least  regard.  If  it  were  not  for  this  perpetual  imitation, 


STEVENSON 

we  should  be  tempted  to  fancy  they  despised  us  outright, 
or  only  considered  us  in  the  light  of  creatures  brutally 
strong  and  brutally  silly;  among  whom  they  condescended 
to  dwell  in  obedience  like  a  philosopher  at  a  barbarous 
court.  At  times,  indeed,  they  display  an  arrogance  of  dis- 
regard that  is  truly  staggering.  Once,  when  I  was  groan- 
ing aloud  with  physical  pain,  a  young  gentleman  came  into 
the  room  and  nonchalantly  inquired  if  I  had  seen  his  bow 
and  arrow.  He  made  no  account  of  my  groans,  which  he 
accepted,  as  he  had  to  accept  so  much  else,  as  a  piece  of 
the  inexplicable  conduct  of  his  elders;  and  like  a  wise 
young  gentleman,  he  would  waste  no  wonder  on  the  sub- 
ject. Those  elders,  who  care  so  little  for  rational  enjoy- 
ment, and  are  even  the  enemies  of  rational  enjoyment  for 
others,  he  had  accepted  without  understanding  and  with- 
out complaint,  as  the  rest  of  us  accept  the  scheme  of  the 
universe. 

We  grown  people  can  tell  ourselves  a  story,  give  and 
take  strokes  until  the  bucklers  ring,  ride  far  and  fast, 
marry,  fall,  and  die;  all  the  while  sitting  quietly  by  the 
fire  or  lying  prone  in  bed.  This  is  exactly  what  a  child 
can  not  do,  or  does  not  do,  at  least,  when  he  can  find  any- 
thing else.  He  works  all  with  lay  figures  and  stage 
properties.  When  his  story  comes  to  the  righting,  he  must 
rise,  get  something  by  way  of  a  sword  and  have  a  set-to 
with  a  piece  of  furniture,  until  he  is  out  of  breath.  When 
he  comes  to  ride  with  the  king's  pardon,  he  must  bestride 
a  chair,  which  he  will  so  hurry  and  belabour,  and  on  which 
he  will  so  furiously  demean  himself,  that  the  messenger  will 
arrive,  if  not  bloody  with  spurring,  at  least  fiery  red  with 
haste.  If  his  romance  involves  an  accident  upon  a  cliff,  he 
must  clamber  in  person  about  the  chest  of  drawers  and  fall 
bodily  upon  the  carpet,  before  his  imagination  is  satisfied. 
Lead  soldiers,  dolls,  all  toys,  in  short,  are  in  the  same 
category  and  answer  the  same  end.  Nothing  can  stagger 
a  child's  faith;  he  accepts  the  clumsiest  substitutes  and 
can  swallow  the  most  staring  incongruities.  The  chair  he 
has  just  been  besieging  as  a  castle,  or  valiantly  cutting  to 
the  ground  as  a  dragon,  is  taken  away  for  the  accommo- 
dation of  a  morning  visitor,  and  he  is  nothing  abashed;  he 
can  skirmish  by  the  hour  with  a  stationary  coal-scuttle; 


ROBERT   LOUIS  STEVENSON 
From  an  etching  by  Samuel  Hollyer 


CHILD'S   PLAY 


473 


in  the  midst  of  the  enchanted  pleasance,  he  can  see,  with- 
out sensible  shock,  the  gardener  soberly  digging  potatoes 
for  the  day's  dinner.  He  can  make  abstraction  of  what- 
ever does  not  fit  into  his  fable;  and  he  puts  his  eyes  into 
his  pocket,  just  as  we  hold  our  noses  in  an  unsavoury  lane. 
And  so  it  is  that,  although  the  ways  of  children  cross  with 
those  of  their  elders  in  a  hundred  places  daily,  they  never 
go  in  the  same  direction  nor  so  much  as  lie  in  the  same 
element.  So  may  the  telegraph  wires  intersect  the  line 
of  the  high-road,  or.  so  might  a  landscape  painter  and  a 
bagman  visit  the  same  country,  and  yet  move  in  different 
worlds. 

People  struck  with  these  spectacles  cry  aloud  about  the 
power  of  imagination  in  the  young.  Indeed,  there  may 
be  two  words  to  that.  It  is,  in  some  ways,  but  a  pedes- 
trian fancy  that  the  child  exhibits.  It  is  the  grown  people 
who  make  the  nursery  stories;  all  the  children  do  is  jeal- 
ously to  preserve  the  text.  One  out  of  a  dozen  reasons 
why  "  Robinson  Crusoe  "  should  be  so  popular  with  youth 
is  that  it  hits  their  level  in  this  matter  to  a  nicety;  Crusoe 
was  always  at  makeshifts  and  had,  in  so  many  words,  to 
play  at  a  great  variety  of  professions;  and  then  the  book 
is  all  about  tools,  and  there  is  nothing  that  delights  a  child 
so  much.  Hammers  and  saws  belong  to  a  province  of 
life  that  positively  calls  for  imitation.  PThe  juvenile  lyrical 
drama,  surely  of  the  most  ancient  Thespian  model,  wherein 
the  trades  of  mankind  are  successively  simulated  to  the 
running  burden  "  On  a  cold  and  frosty  morning,"  gives 
a  good  instance  of  the  artistic  taste  in  children.  And  this 
need  for  overt  action  and  lay  figures  testifies  to  a  defect 
in  the  child's  imagination  which  prevents  him  from  carry- 
ing out  his  novels  in  the  privacy  of  his  own  heart.  He 
does  not  yet  know  enough  of  the  world  and  men.  His 
experience  is  incomplete.  That  stage  wardrobe  and  scene- 
room  that  we  call  the  memory  is  so  ill  provided  that  he 
can  overtake  few  combinations  and  body  out  few  stories, 
to  his  own  content,  without  some  external  aid.  He  is  at 
the  experimental  stage;  he  is  not  sure  how  one  would  feel 
in  certain  circumstances;  to  make  sure,  he  must  come  as 
near  trying  it  as  his  means  permit.  And  so  here  is  young 
heroism  with  a  wooden  sword,  and  mothers  practise  their 


STEVENSON 

kind  vocation  over  a  bit  of  jointed  stick.  It  may  be 
laughable  enough  just  now;  but  it  is  these  same  people 
and  these  same  thoughts,  that  not  long  hence,  when  they 
are  on  the  theatre  of  life,  will  make  you  weep  and  tremble. 
For  children  think  very  much  the  same  thoughts  and 
dream  the  same  dreams  as  bearded  men  and  marriage- 
able women.  No  one  is  more  romantic.  Fame  and  hon- 
our, the  love  of  young  men  and  the  love  of  mothers,  the 
business  man's  pleasure  in  method,  all  these  and  others 
they  anticipate  and  rehearse  in  their  play  hours.  Upon 
us,  who  are  further  advanced  and  fairly  dealing  with  the 
threads  of  destiny,  they  only  glance  from  time  to  time  to 
glean  a  hint  for  their  own  mimetic  reproduction.  Two 
children  playing  at  soldiers  are  far  more  interesting  to 
each  other  than  one  of  the  scarlet  beings  whom  both  are 
busy  imitating.  This  is  perhaps  the  greatest  oddity  of  all. 
"  Art  for  art  "  is  their  motto,  and  the  doings  of  grown  folk 
are  only  interesting  as  the  raw  material  for  play.  Not 
Theophile  Gautier,  not  Flaubert,  can  look  more  callously 
upon  life,  or  rate  the  reproduction  more  highly  over  the 
reality;  and  they  will  parody  an  execution,  a  deathbed, 
or  the  funeral  of  the  young  man  of  Nain,  with  all  the 
cheerfulness  in  the  world. 

The  true  parallel  for  play  is  not  to  be  found,  of  course, 
in  conscious  art,  which,  though  it  be  derived  from  play, 
is  itself  an  abstract,  impersonal  thing,  and  depends  largely 
upon  philosophical  interests  beyond  the  scope  of  child- 
hood. It  is  when  we  make  castles  in  the  air  and  personate 
the  leading  character  in  our  own  romances  that  we  re- 
turn to  the  spirit  of  our  first  years.  Only,  there  are  several 
reasons  why  the  spirit  is  no  longer  so  agreeable  to  indulge. 
Nowadays,  when  we  admit  this  personal  element  into  our 
divagations  we  are  apt  to  stir  up  uncomfortable  and  sor- 
rowful memories,  and  remind  ourselves  sharply  of  old 
wounds.  Our  day-dreams  can  no  longer  lie  all  in  the  air 
like  a  story  in  the  "Arabian  Nights";  they  read  to  us 
rather  like  the  history  of  a  period  in  which  we  ourselves 
had  taken  part,  where  we  come  across  many  unfortunate 
passages  and  find  our  own  conduct  smartly  reprimanded. 
And  then  the  child,  mind  you,  acts  his  parts.  He  does 
not  merely  repeat  them  to  himself;  he  leaps,  he  runs,  and 


CHILD'S    PLAY 


475 


sets  the  blood  agog  over  all  his  body.  And  so  his  play 
breathes  him,  and  he  no  sooner  assumes  a  passion  than  he 
gives  it  vent.  Alas!  when 'we  betake  ourselves  to  our  in- 
tellectual form  of  play,  sitting  quietly  by  the  fire  or  lying 
prone  in  bed,  we  rouse  many  hot  feelings  for  which  we 
can  find  no  outlet.  Substitutes  are  not  acceptable  to  the 
mature  mind,  which  desires  the  thing  itself;  and  even  to 
rehearse  a  triumphant  dialogue  with  one's  enemy,  al- 
though it  is  perhaps  the  most  satisfactory  piece  of  play 
still  left  within  our  reach,  is  not  entirely  satisfying,  and  is 
even  apt  to  lead  to  a  visit  and  an  interview  which  may 
be  the  reverse  of  triumphant  after  all. 

In  the  child's  world  of  dim  sensation,  play  is  all  in  all. 
"  Making  believe  "  is  the  gist  of  his  whole  life,  and  he 
can  not  so  much  as  take  a  walk  except  in  character.  I 
could  not  learn  my  alphabet  without  some  suitable  mise- 
en-scene,  and  had  to  act  a  business  man  in  an  office  be- 
fore I  could  sit  down  to  my  book.  Will  you  kindly  ques- 
tion your  memory,  and  find  out  how  much  you  did,  work 
or  pleasure,  in  good  faith  and  soberness,  and  for  how  much 
you  had  to  cheat  yourself  with  some  invention?  I  re- 
member, as  though  it  were  yesterday,  the  expansion  of 
spirit,  the  dignity  and  self-reliance,  that  came  with  a  pair  of 
mustachios  in  burned  cork,  even  when  there  was  none  to 
see.  Children  are  even  content  to  forego  what  we  call  the 
realities,  and  prefer  the  shadow  to  the  substance.  When 
they  might  be  speaking  intelligibly  together,  they  chatter 
senseless  gibberish  by  the  hour,  and  are  quite  happy  be- 
cause they  are  making  believe  to  speak  French.  I  have 
said  already  how  even  the  imperious  appetite  of  hunger 
suffers  itself  to  be  gulled  and  led  by  the  nose  with  the 
fag  end  of  an  old  song.  And  it  goes  deeper  than  this; 
when  children  are  together  even  a  meal  is  felt  as  an  inter- 
ruption in  the  business  of  life;  and  they  must  find  some 
imaginative  sanction,  and  tell  themselves  some  sort  of 
story,  to  account  for,  to  colour,  to  render  entertaining, 
the  simple  processes  of  eating  and  drinking.  What  won- 
derful fancies  I  have  heard  evolved  out  of  the  pattern  upon 
teacups! — from  which  there  followed  a  code  of  rules  and 
a  whole  world  of  excitement,  until  tea-drinking  began  to 
take  rank  as  a  game.  When  my  cousin  and  I  took  our 


STEVENSON 

porridge  of  a  morning,  we  had  a  device  to  enliven  the 
course  of  the  meal.  He  ate  his  with  sugar,  and  explained 
it  to  be  a  country  continually  buried  under  snow.  I  took 
mine  with  milk,  and  explained  it  to  be  a  country  suffer- 
ing gradual  inundation.  You  can  imagine  us  exchanging 
bulletins;  how  here  was  an  island  still  unsubmerged,  here 
a  valley  not  yet  covered  with  snow;  what  inventions  were 
made;  how  his  population  lived  in  cabins  on  perches  and 
travelled  on  stilts,  and  how  mine  was  always  in  boats; 
how  the  interest  grew  furious,  as  the  last  corner  of  safe 
ground  was  cut  off  on  all  sides  and  grew  smaller  every 
moment;  and  how,  in  fine,  the  food  was  of  altogether  sec- 
ondary importance,  and  might  even  have  been  nauseous, 
so  long  as  we  seasoned  it  with  these  dreams.  But  per- 
haps the  most  exciting  moments  I  ever  had  over  a  meal 
were  in  the  case  of  calves'-feet  jelly.  It  was  hardly  pos- 
sible not  to  believe — and  you  may  be  sure,  so  far  from 
trying,  I  did  all  I  could  to  favour  the  illusion — that  some 
part  of  it  was  hollow,  and  that  sooner  or  later  my  spoon 
would  lay  open  the  secret  tabernacle  of  the  golden  rock. 
There  might  some  miniature  "  Red  Beard "  await  his 
hour;  there  might  one  find  the  treasures  of  the  "  Forty 
Thieves,"  and  bewildered  Cassim  beating  about  the  walls. 
And  so  I  quarried  on  slowly,  with  bated  breath,  savouring 
the  interest.  Believe  me,  I  had  little  palate  left  for  the 
jelly;  and  though  I  preferred  the  taste  when  I  took  cream 
with  it,  I  used  often  to  go  without,  because  the  cream 
dimmed  the  transparent  fractures. 

Even  with  games  this  spirit  is  authoritative  with  right- 
minded  children.  It  is  thus  that  hide-and-seek  has  so 
pre-eminent  a  sovereignty,  for  it  is  the  wellspring  of  ro- 
mance, and  the  actions  and  the  excitement  to  which  it 
gives  rise  lend  themselves  to  almost  any  sort  of  fable.  And 
thus  cricket,  which  is  a  mere  matter  of  dexterity,  palpably 
about  nothing  and  for  no  end,  often  fails  to  satisfy  in- 
fantile craving.  It  is  a  game,  if  you  like,  but  not  a  game 
of  play.  You  can  not  tell  yourself  a  story  about  cricket; 
and  the  activity  it  calls  forth  can  be  justified  on  no  ra- 
tional theory.  Even  football,  although  it  admirably  simu- 
lates the  tug  and  the  ebb  and  flow  of  battle,  has  presented 
difficulties  to  the  mind  of  young  sticklers  after  verisimili- 


CHILD'S   PLAY  477 

tude;  and  I  knew  at  least  one  little  boy  wlio  was  mightily 
exercised  about  the  presence  of  the  ball,  and  had  to  spirit 
himself  up,  whenever  he  came  to  play,  with  an  elaborate 
story  of  enchantment,  and  take  the  missile  as  a  sort  of 
talisman  bandied  about  in  conflict  between  two  Arabian 
nations. 

To  think  of  such  a  frame  of  mind  is  to  become  dis- 
quieted about  the  bringing  up  of  children.  Surely  they 
dwell  in  a  mythological  epoch,  and  are  not  the  contem- 
poraries of  their  parents.  What  can  they  think  of  them? 
what  can  they  make  of  these  bearded  or  petticoated  giants 
who  look  down  upon  their  games?  who  move  upon  a 
cloudy  Olympus,  following  unknown  designs  apart  from 
rational  enjoyment?  who  profess  the  tenderest  solicitude 
for  children,  and  yet  every  now  and  again  reach  down  out 
of  their  altitude  and  terribly  vindicate  the  prerogatives  of 
age?  Off  goes  the  child,  corporally  smarting,  but  morally 
rebellious.  Were  there  ever  such  unthinkable  deities  as 
parents?  I  would  give  a  great  deal  to  know  what,  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten,  is  the  child's  unvarnished  feeling.  A 
sense  of  past  cajolery;  a  sense  of  personal  attraction,  at  best 
very  feeble;  above  all,  I  should  imagine,  a  sense  of  terror 
for  the  untried  residue  of  mankind  go  to  make  up  the  at- 
traction that  he  feels.  No  wonder,  poor  little  heart,  with 
such  a  weltering  world  in  front  of  him,  if  he  clings  to  the 
hand  he  knows!  The  dread  irrationality  of  the  whole  affair, 
as  it  seems  to  children,  is  a  thing  we  are  all  too  ready  to 
forget.  "  Oh,  why,"  I  remember  passionately  wondering, 
"  why  can  we  not  all  be  happy  and  devote  ourselves  to 
play?  "  And  when  children  do  philosophize,  I  believe  it  is 
usually  to  very  much  the  same  purpose. 

One  thing,  at  least,  comes  very  clearly  out  of  these 
considerations:  that  whatever  we  are  to  expect  at  the 
hands  of  children,  it  should  not  be  any  peddling  exactitude 
about  matters  of  fact.  They  walk  in  a  vain  show,  and 
among  mists  and  rainbows;  they  are  passionate  after 
dreams  and  unconcerned  about  realities;  speech  is  a  dif- 
ficult art  not  wholly  learned,  and  there  is  nothing  in  their 
own  tastes  or  purposes  to  teach  them  what  we  mean  by 
abstract  truthfulness.  When  a  bad  writer  is  inexact,  even 
if  he  can  look  back  on  half  a  century  of  years,  we  charge 


478 


STEVENSON 


him  with  incompetence  and  not  with  dishonesty.  And 
why  not  extend  the  same  allowance  to  imperfect  speakers? 
Let  a  stockbroker  be  dead  stupid  about  poetry,  or  a  poet 
inexact  in  the  details  of  business,  and  we  excuse  them 
heartily  from  blame.  But  show  us  a  miserable,  un- 
breeched,  human  entity,  whose  whole  profession  it  is  to 
take  a  tub  for  a  fortified  town  and  a  shaving-brush  for 
the  deadly  stiletto,  and  who  passes  three  fourths  of  his 
time  in  a  dream  and  the  rest  in  open  self-deception,  and 
we  expect  him  to  be  as  nice  upon  a  matter  of  fact  as 
a  scientific  expert  bearing  evidence.  Upon  my  heart,  I 
think  it  less  than  decent.  You  do  not  consider  how  little 
the  child  sees,  or  how  swift  he  is  to  weave  what  he 
has  seen  into  bewildering  fiction;  and  that  he  cares  no 
more  for  what  you  call  truth  than  you  for  a  gingerbread 
dragoon. 

I  am  reminded,  as  I  write,  that  the  child  is  very  in- 
quiring as  to  the  precise  truth  of  stones.  But,  indeed,  this 
is  a  very  different  matter,  and  one  bound  up  with  the 
subject  of  play,  and  the  precise  amount  of  playfulness,  or 
payability,  to  be  looked  for  in  the  world.  Many  such 
burning  questions  must  arise  in  the  course  of  nursery  edu- 
cation. Among  the  faima  of  this  planet,  which  already 
embraces  the  pretty  soldier  and  the  terrifying  Irish  beg- 
garman,  is  or  is  not  the  child  to  expect  a  Bluebeard  or 
a  Cormoran?  Is  he  or  is  he  not  to  look  out  for  magi- 
cians, kindly  and  potent?  May  he  or  may  he  not  reason- 
ably hope  to  be  cast  away  upon  a  desert  island,  or  turned 
to  such  diminutive  proportions  that  he  can  live  on  equal 
terms  with  his  lead  soldiery,  and  go  a  cruise  in  his  own 
toy  schooner?  Surely  all  these  are  practical  questions  to  a 
neophyte  entering  upon  life  with  a  view  to  play.  Precision 
upon  such  a  point  the  child  can  understand.  But  if  you 
merely  ask  him  of  his  past  behaviour,  as  to  who  threw 
such  a  stone,  for  instance,  or  struck  such  and  such  a 
match;  or  whether  he  had  looked  into  a  parcel  or  gone 
by  a  forbidden  path — why,  he  can  see  no  moment  in 
the  inquiry,  and  it  is  ten  to  one  he  has  already  half 
forgotten  and  half  bemused  himself  with  subsequent  im- 
aginings. 

Jt  would  be  easy  to  leave  them  in  their  native  cloud- 


CHILD'S   PLAY 


479 


land,  where  they  figure  so  prettily — pretty  like  flowers  and 
innocent  like  dogs.  They  will  come  out  of  their  gardens 
soon  enough,  and  have  to  go  into  offices  and  the  witness 
box.  Spare  them  yet  a  while,  O  conscientious  parent! 
Let  them  doze  among  their  playthings  yet  a  little,  for  who 
knows  what  a  rough,  warfaring  existence  lies  before  them 
in  the  future? 


THE    END 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


OC7    1  6  1947 


REC'D  LD 

NOV  2  0  1962 


00  31  '64-11  AM 


LD  2l-100m-12,'46(A2012sl6)4120 


YC 1 02200 


m 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


